Taysha gains control of GAN candidate and program; BI licenses COMT inhibitors from Lieber Institute; plus three new gene therapy-driven tie-ups between biopharma and academia.

Private Company Edition: Venture capital mega-rounds continue a brisk pace with machine learning-based drug discovery firm insitro and gene therapy developer Graphite Bio among recent $100m-plus deals. Also, Argobio raised €50m to fund five start-ups in Europe. 

The Brussels-based company has leant on its local knowledge to snap up Leuven-headquartered biotech Handl and its proprietary AAV capsid technology platform.

The Italian firm has some talking to do with the US FDA before it can unblind Phase III data on sarizotan, its Rett syndrome therapy which could be "potentially transformative" for Newron.