Cancer deals involving Junshi/Wigen, Allist/Octimet, Yufan/Abound, Takeda/Presage, Daiichi Sankyo/AnHeart, LegoChem/Harbour Biomed, plus a stem cell partnership and a lysosomal storage disorder agreement.

Private Company Edition: Several drug developers targeting neurological diseases raised venture capital recently. In addition to Nura Bio, Encoded Therapeutics revealed a $135m series D round. Also, Longwood closed a $170m fund and Flagship launched Omega Therapeutics with $85m.

Which kinds of innovations make for incremental enhancements in the hands of large companies and which are meaningful enough to sustain a venture-backed start-up company? In a mature market for coronary stents dominated by large companies, start-ups developing new stents need to find the answers. Areas of innovation fall into four basic categories: improving stent safety and biocompatibility, avoiding the need for dual antiplatelet therapy, enhancing deliverability, and introducing specialty stents for complex vessels. Three companies profiled here have a plan for taking sufficient market share, reducing risk, and rewarding investors.

Growth by innovation is almost considered a birthright in interventional cardiology, and based on presentations at this year's Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics meeting, held this September in San Francisco, it seems clear that innovation still reigns supreme in this specialty. However, as in other medical device markets, ongoing economic and regulatory pressures are taking their toll, particularly in the drug-eluting stent market, as the field adjusts to a new era of cost control and economic uncertainty.