The UK's Celleron has attracted a "blue chip suite of investors" to an Irish-domiciled spin-off based on the potential of Roche-developed emactuzumab for TGCT, a debilitating orphan disease that causes joint damage and has limited clinical options.

Private Company Edition: I-Mab's $220m Series C round continued the trend of big investments in companies focused on or headquartered in China. Also, Shanghai-based Nuance brought in a combined $35m and European firms dominated recent small financings as US VC deals took a summer break.

The oral administration of synthetic thermostable vaccines that use a bacterial vector could enter clinical studies in 2019, funded by VCs interested in their use in emerging markets, where endemic and childhood diseases could yield to the new approach.

Quintiles has invested £3 million in a new company formed in partnership with the University of Oxford and two of its professors, which will provide oncology consulting services and new cancer biomarkers to clients.