The role of biopharma start-ups in bringing innovative therapies to the market has grown enormously. These waves of new specialist companies often have the most innovative approaches to targeting a disease, and big pharma has become increasingly reliant on their fresh ideas to power pipelines. 

CEO Michael Gilman, who now helms the company full time, said Arrakis will use its Series B venture capital funding to build a pipeline of drug candidates, primarily in cancer, with the goal of taking its first medicines into the clinic in the next two to three years.

Obsidian CEO Michael Gilman described the company's technology – which allows CAR-T cells and other therapies to be activated by available small molecule drugs – as being able to modulate the effective yet toxic therapies by dialing down, turning up or shutting off the treatments as needed.

Private Company Edition: Life science firms in J&J's JLabs incubators have raised $9.4bn to date from deals and financings, including five IPOs. Also, October brings a wide range of new equity and VC financings.