SAN FRANCISCO – Dealmaking in "really robust" 2014 easily outstripped the previous year, with 3,141 agreements nailed down that year, valued at about $382.7 billion, as compared to 2013's total of just over 2,100, worth about $158 billion, said Vinay Singh, senior deals analyst with Thomson Reuters Recap – "a third as many total deals, [with] well over twice as much" money involved.

SAN FRANCISCO – Atop its eye-opening $450 million financing earlier this month, Moderna Therapeutics Inc. stacked another $50 million from Merck & Co. Inc. as well as an equity investment of $50 million from the pharma giant in a three-year license and collaboration deal that gives Merck rights to commercialize five product candidates that could come from the arrangement, designed to explore vaccines and passive immunity treatments against viral diseases using modified messenger RNA (mRNA).

SAN FRANCISCO – With the recent Agenus Inc. deal in immuno-oncology "adding a new dimension to our discovery engine" and phase III rheumatoid arthritis winner baricitinib likely to generate "a lot of news this year," Incyte Corp. will welcome a pair of brand new clinical candidates in oncology to its pipeline this year, CEO Herve Hoppenot told attendees of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

Less than a month after partner Glaxosmithkline plc (GSK) offered good phase III news with the would-be blockbuster shingles therapy HZ/su exploiting Agenus Inc.'s QS-21 Stimulon adjuvant, Agenus disclosed a new arrangement with Incyte Corp. to investigate checkpoint modulators in onco-immunology, by way of a deal similar to – but much broader than – an earlier pact with Merck & Co. Inc.

Investors will have to wait until later this year for detailed data on such matters as bone mineral density (BMD) – as well as phase IIb results from a separate, earlier-stage study in uterine fibroids – but the six-month top-line results from the first of two phase III trials with oral elagolix for endometriosis put a spark in shares of Neurocrine Biosciences Inc.

Rare diseases and equally rare financing success earmark Synageva Biopharma Corp., which added more proof of investor hunger in the space by pricing its public offering of 3 million shares at $94.19 each to garner about $282.5 million.

Minerva Neurosciences Inc. could regain at least some of June's disappointing initial public offering (IPO) and better align its pipeline candidates, thanks to enthusiasm over preclinical data from nonhuman primates – marmosets – in Parkinson's disease (PD), results that let shares (NASDAQ:NERV) close Tuesday at $6.49, up 8.2 percent.

Tallying venture capital investments aplenty last year, Aduro Biotech Inc. chalked up more in a series D preferred stock financing of $51.4 million for its immuno-oncology pipeline, an amount that brings the total haul for the Berkeley, Calif.-based firm in 2014 to $106.4 million.

Royalty deals "continue to grow, year in and year out," said Todd Davis, founding managing director of Healthcare Royalty (HC Royalty) Partners, which in October closed on Fund III, with $1.5 billion available for investing in an environment where – unlike during the correction that followed 2008 – "capital is in prolific supply."

Symic Biomedical Inc.'s $15 million series A round will let the San Francisco-based firm advance its two preclinical lead programs, as partner-shopping begins for more efforts that deploy proteoglycan-like therapies.