Focused on precision medicine for renal disease, Chinook gets Aduro’s Nasdaq listing and starting capital of $200m. During a wave of modest-sized M&A deals, Tetra finds buyer, Tetraphase gets competing bids.

An analysis by START-UP reveals that newly public companies are raising more money (on average) than comparable companies who remained private, even if total dollars for the pool of public firms is dwarfed by the total amount raised by their private brethren.

The dealmaking column is a survey of recent transactions, including strategic alliances, mergers & acquisitions, and financings, in the life sciences industries. Deals are listed by the following industry sectors: in vitro diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and research/analytical instrumentation and reagents. All transactions are excerpted from Elsevier's Strategic Transactions

After the failure of the drug company/PBM mergers of the mid-1990s, the notion that pharmacy benefit managers can play a strategic role in drug selection finds few takers among drug company executives who, instead, now embrace a status quo ante bellum view that new, innovative products and strong brands succeed or fail without the influence of PBMs. But several recent trends, including a significant industry consolidation, have left a core group of market leaders bigger and more focused than ever. In particular, the growing influence of the Internet as both a tool and information source and the likely passage of Medicare drug coverage should make PBMs more influential in product selection and formulary management. Behind both lies a newly empowered consumer, a force that has bedeviled PBMs in the past but which they now seek to embrace. Express Scripts officials argue that their focus on traditional PBM values should, if anything, make them more, not less relevant to drug companies in the future.