Arteaus sells royalty stream from Lilly's Emgality giving investors a $260m payday. Also, Pfizer spin-out SpringWorks nabs another $125m, Arch Oncology and Prevail Therapeutics close $50m Series B rounds, and Karuna's recent financing grows to $80m.

Forty Seven Inc. has signed immuno-oncology deals with Merck of Germany and Roche that will see the launch of several combination studies for their PD-L1 inhibitors and Forty Seven's promising investigational CD47 antibody.

Precision medicine delivered by novel drug delivery systems, ranging from sensors to dose printers, could eventually revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry. Although many of these technologies are years away from commercialization, their ability to provide exact dosing with slow sustained release and more targeted therapy should improve patient compliance and outcomes.

Series A venture capital and seed funding rounds for biopharma firms in 2016 kept pace with the level of investment seen in 2015, excluding one major deal in 2015, laying the foundation for optimism regarding early-stage financings in 2017 for particularly innovative companies.