Private Company Edition: Venture capital invested in pharma and biotech in 2020 totaled $19.5m through Q3, just $400m below the full-year record total of $19.9bn in 2018. Also, Canaan and Catalio reveal new VC funds, while Talaris’s $115m series B leads recent financings.

Merck Research Laboratories president Roger Perlmutter returned to the company when its R&D was at a crossroads. Now he is retiring and handing the company’s post-Keytruda growth over to SVP Dean Li.  

Senior executives from Bayer outlined at a recent summit the contours of digital transformation already underway and the vital components of a successful digital team. Firms need to be able to operate technology at the “speed of business” and not “at the speed of a ticketing queue.”

Private Company Edition: Neogene, Escient, ESCAPE, Resolution and Attralus raised a combined $320m in venture capital rounds. Also, large Recursion round could double the size of its pipeline, Korro Bio raised $91.5m and Flagship launched Generate Biomedicines.