Private Company Edition: Alexis Borisy and his Curie.Bio co-founders will invest $5m-$7m to help companies get to lead optimization within 12-18 months. Also, Feng Zhang-founded Aera launched with $193m, Hexagon Bio raised a $77.3m series B round and Halda emerged with $76m.

Having failed to live up to its promising beginnings, FerGene, the gene therapy firm founded with the backing of Ferring and Blackstone to advance the former’s candidate for bladder cancer is back under the Swiss pharma's wing. However, doubts about its future and that of nadofaragene firadonavec remain.

Argenx partners with Elektrofi and Iontas; China’s Qilu obtains global rights to Peptron’s antibody-drug conjugate and also ends co-development pact with Quantum Genomics.

Regulatory review resource-intensive cell and gene therapy licensing applications are rolling toward US FDA along expedited pathways, while complete response letters and missed goal dates start to stack up under pandemic inspection constraints.