With its eyes set on securing an FDA clearance for its automated bench top blood testing system, Truvian Sciences has raised more than $105 million in new financing for the final steps of its development.

Foresite Capital banked $969 million in its fifth and biggest raise yet to invest in companies solving some of the biggest inefficiencies in today’s healthcare system. The capital will be split into two funds: About $775 million, or 80%, will go into a core fund, while the remaining $194 million will become what the firm calls an opportunity fund.

After withdrawing its full-year guidance back in the first quarter as it, like so many other CROs, was hit by pandemic chaos, PPD saw its revenue jump this quarter.

After a flurry of CRO takeovers a few years back, the megamerger market went quiet. But, today, as the industry hauls itself out of the pandemic funk of 2020, Icon is getting out its checkbook in a massive $12 billion buyout of PRA Health.

Multiple companies aim to surmount the limitations of CAR-T therapy by going beyond T cells and engineering cell therapies based on natural killer (NK) cells or macrophages instead. Orna Therapeutics’ solution is more holistic: bringing CARs directly to a patient’s immune cells to help them kill cancer. The company uncloaks with $100 million to develop this approach, among others, all of which are based on engineered circular RNA.

As Kira Pharma shepherds two more programs toward the clinic, the complement-focused biotech is bolstering its leadership team with a trio of biopharma veterans, including a pair of Alexion alums.

Hoping to echo the success of blockbuster cancer med Darzalex and create a new line of pipeline meds, Genmab has promoted its head of oncology Tahamtan Ahmadi, M.D., Ph.D., to run its research.

Scientists have cultivated simplified organoids from human cells in laboratories for years, using them to imitate and study the body’s internal systems for insight into diseases and treatments—however, each small simulacrum is typically not long-lived.

NovellusDx started out as a diagnostics company but has been making moves toward becoming a cancer therapeutics biotech in recent months, picking up a BRAF drug from Daiichi Sankyo and raising $57 million to shepherd it through the clinic. Now, it’s wrapping its transformation up with a new name and a new CEO: Fore Biotherapeutics and Usama Malik, a former Immunomedics executive who orchestrated the company’s $21 billion buyout by Gilead.

As Daiichi Sankyo looks to cement its place as a major cancer R&D player, the Japanese Big Pharma is boosting its C-suite by nabbing a cell therapy veteran as its new global head of research and development.