Little more than half-a-year after closing its $78 million series A financing, Artiva Biotherapeutics Inc. has inked a new global licensing deal with Merck & Co. Inc. to develop up to three natural killer (NK) cell therapies engineered with chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) against tumor-associated antigens of its choosing. Merck will pay Artiva $30 million up front for two initial programs, plus $15 million more should it opt into the third. Each program carries $612 million in potential development and commercial milestone payments. With unfettered success, total deal value could hit $1.88 billion, plus royalties.

TORONTO – Pointclickcare Technologies Inc. has followed up a series of private sector investments and purchases with its acquisition of Collective Medical Inc. and its real‐time notification platform for streamlining transitions from one stage of health care to another and reducing unnecessary length of stay and patient admissions. One of this country’s largest software companies, Pointclickcare said the US$500 million plus acquisition will pair its “rich, post‐acute data set” with Collective Medical’s network of more than 1,300 hospitals and other health care organizations across 39 states.

Boston Scientific Corp. has agreed to acquire Preventice Solutions Inc. for $925 million up front and up to an additional $300 million in a potential commercial milestone payment. The former has been an investor in Preventice since 2015 and currently holds an equity stake of about 22%, which is expected to result in a net payment of about $720 million upon closing and a milestone payment of up to roughly $230 million. The acquisition is projected to close by the middle of the year.

DUBLIN – Mina Therapeutics Ltd. is extending its small activating RNA (saRNA) technology into the central nervous system through a partnership with Les Laboratoires Servier SAS that could be worth as much as €220 million (US$266.5 million) in up-front and milestone payments.

Haemonetics Corp. said Wednesday that it will acquire Cardiva Medical Inc., a privately held manufacturer of blood closure systems, for up to $510 million. The all-cash deal expands Haemonetics’ hospital portfolio with two catheter-based devices used to shut off access sites following minimally invasive cardiology and electrophysiology (EP) procedures.

KSQ Therapeutics Inc.’s chief scientific officer, Frank Stegmeier, said that the CRISPRomics technology that drew Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. to the table allows, “for the first time, genome-scale functional screening [in vivo as well as in vitro] across multiple disease settings. It really takes the guessing game out of your drug target selection.”

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. has inked a definitive agreement to acquire Mesa Biotech Inc., a privately held molecular diagnostics company with a point-of-care (POC) platform, for approximately $450 million in cash. The scientific instruments and testing giant said it will pay an additional $100 million in cash upon the completion of certain milestones. The planned acquisition will expand Thermo Fisher’s franchise of diagnostic test options with a novel platform that enables nucleic acid polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing at the point of care.

Royal Philips NV will close on its $635 million acquisition of Capsule Technologies Inc. in the first quarter of 2021, continuing the expansion of the Dutch company's remote monitoring capabilities. Capsule's Medical Device Information Platform integrates nearly all medical devices used in hospitals with electronic health records in a vendor-neutral system. The deal has already received approval from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice.