Totals for aggregate deals and in the M&A, alliance and divestment categories were similar among the 10 busiest deal makers from 2020 to 2021, but COVID-19 may have driven a more hectic deal-making pace overall in 2020.

Private Company Edition: Jeito says its new first fund is Europe’s largest life science-focused fund. Illumina will use its venture capital to support tools, diagnostics, therapeutics and more. Also, IASO closed a $108m series C round and Amolyt raised $80m in series C financing.

Roche/Genentech oncology partnering maintained a robust dealmaking pace through the pandemic, keeping the percentage of partnered R&D programs at about 50% of the cancer drug pipeline.

Deal snapshot: Roche’s third partnership around small molecule, RNA-targeted therapies taps Ribometrix’s three-dimensional structural analysis of RNA to find pockets amenable to small molecule drugs.