Private Company Edition: Biomedtracker found that 53% of financings during the first quarter were venture capital deals versus 32% in Q1 of last year. Also, Qiming closed a $260m fund, Transition Bio raised a $50m series A round, ProfoundBio completed a $70m series A+ and MycoMedica raised $60m.

After investing more than €23m in Sanifit, the Spanish firm being acquired by Vifor Pharma, Caixa Capital's director of life sciences investments spoke to Scrip about the venture capital firm's long-term approach.

Spain now enjoys a reasonable level of venture capital to help translate its scientific excellence into budding biotechs and the country's major life sciences backer Ysios is looking to unearth more jewels there, as well as in the rest of Europe and North America.

Plus deals involving BioAtla/BeiGene, OliX/Thea, Chugai/Argenx, Shionogi/HanaVax, TaiGen/Luminairie, Novartis/1Yao.com, Sperogenix/Minoryx, Quantum/Orient EuroPharma and AtomWise/GC Pharma.