Pipeline Watch is a weekly snapshot of selected late-stage clinical trial events announced by pharmaceutical and biotech companies at medical and industry conferences, in financial and company presentations, and in company releases and statements.

Venture Capital Edition: Pfizer deprioritized neuroscience as an early R&D focus earlier this year, but will stay involved by spending 25% of the $600m added to its venture fund on neurology investments. Also, China VC investment keeps up fast pace and Alta Partners closes a new $130m health care fund.

Biopharma companies raised $13.4 billion in Q2, mostly through IPOs. Thanks to several billion-dollar deals in Q2, 2017 is shaping up to be a year of CRO consolidations. Big pharma continued divesting assets to smaller biopharma companies.

The firm's $38.6m in Series C cash will fund additional clinical trials for lead translation regulator eFT508, support the first human trial for eFT226 and advance a third program into preclinical studies.