Century Therapeutics brings in $250m for its cell therapy programs in a series A round, while immunotherapy specialist BioNTech sets a record for series B, raising $350m. Another five firms brought in rounds of $100m or greater...

Companies are sprouting across the pharma value chain that harness the voices of patients and other individual stakeholders to drive the research, development, and financing of drugs. Pharma is taking tentative steps toward using these methods, but high barriers remain to their systematic integration in R&D.

Transparency Life Sciences applies crowdsourcing to the design of clinical protocols with the aim of lowering costs and improving outcomes for clinical trials. The company won FDA clearance for its first IND based on a protocol that resulted from its process and is securing its first financing.