Private Company Edition: In the latest round of $100m-plus venture capital financings, CG Oncology, MBX Biosciences and Jnana Therapeutics raised $120m, $115m and $107m, respectively. Also, MVM Partners closed a $500m fund and former Sage CEO leads incubator ABio-X in Massachusetts.

AbbVie pays $130m up front with up to $870m in earnout potential for UCB spinout focused on SV2A modulators. BioNTech gets rights to preclinical TCR candidates for solid tumors from Medigene.

Totals for aggregate deals and in the M&A, alliance and divestment categories were similar among the 10 busiest deal makers from 2020 to 2021, but COVID-19 may have driven a more hectic deal-making pace overall in 2020.

Ahead of the usual flurry of deal-making in January, Roche gets retinal cell therapy candidate from Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Pfizer subsidiary Amplyx licenses antiviral candidate to Vera, and GSK expands neurology tie-up with Ligand.