The firm’s $260m Series D is the largest ever for biopharma in China and one of the biggest of the year worldwide; other notable financings go to Biohaven, Kymab and Magenta. Derived from Strategic Transactions, Informa’s premium source for tracking life sciences deal activity, the Venture Funding Deals column provides a comprehensive monthly review of emerging biopharmaceutical companies that have received venture funding. This month’s column covers deals announced October through early December.

Recent executive-level company changes and promotions in the biopharma, medical device and diagnostics industries.

Improvements in targeting the sources of aberrant cardiac rhythms may open the heart up to new therapies. In this issue, we profile four start-ups focused on developing treatments for AF and other arrhythimas: Acesion Pharma, ChanRx, Milestone Pharmaceuticals and Serodus.

Denmark’s Acesion Pharma AS’ co-founders Ulrik Sørensen, now serving as CEO, and Morten Grunnet, the start-up’s CSO, both worked for over a decade at NeuroSearch AS on a target and compounds that could yield a new treatment for AF. The target is a type of calcium-activated potassium channel classified as the SK channel. Although many kinds of ion channels have been pursued as targets of AF drugs, this particular channel is novel as a drug target and no drugs have been developed against it.