Just over a month after raising $97m in a series B round, Oxford University spinout MiroBio and its immune checkpoint agonists have been snapped up by Gilead Sciences. 

Private Company Edition: The amount of venture capital raised by biopharma firms fell but individual companies grabbed a lot of cash, making for a remarkable Q2 relative to pre-pandemic times. Recent Q3 rounds includes Frontera’s $160m series B. Also, Oxford Science Enterprises added €250m to its fund.

ARCH closed a $3bn VC fund to end the month of June while in the same week six public biopharma firms said they are cutting jobs. Even so, some publicly traded companies have been able to launch sizeable offerings, including a $450m note sale by Cytokinetics and Xenon’s $250m follow-on. 

ERC Belgium has pledged to collect more data to convince the European Medicines Agency that Sitoiganap merits approval. Meanwhile, UGA Biopharma said it would address the agency’s objections over its biosimilar version of eptacog alfa.