Astellas adds a large-market drug candidate to its regenerative medicine portfolio, while Frequency Therapeutics almost doubles its fundraising to date. It traded ex-US rights to hearing loss candidate FX-322 for $80m up front and up to $545m in milestone fees plus royalties.

Amicus announced its ambitions in gene therapy last year, recently purchased Celenex and 10 pipeline candidates, and now partners with Penn on gene therapies. Celltrion is collaborating with Emory in atherosclerosis therapies.

Fortress Biotech’s subsidiary will add the lentiviral gene therapy now in pair of Phase I/II trials to its pipeline. RXi partners with Karolinska to advance its self-delivering RNAi technology, while Avalon enlists Weill Cornell to enhance its CAR-T capabilities.

Private Company Edition: Martin Mackay and two other former Alexion executives co-founded the rare disease start-up in January with a $37m Series A to kick things off. Also, Innovent raises $150m in venture cash, Tmunity adds $35m and Third Rock launches Cedilla.