The Barcelona-based firm, which has a protein splicing platform that aims to address the major limitation of delivering large genes using AAV vectors, has sealed the largest series A fundraising by a Spanish biotech.

Spain now enjoys a reasonable level of venture capital to help translate its scientific excellence into budding biotechs and the country's major life sciences backer Ysios is looking to unearth more jewels there, as well as in the rest of Europe and North America.

In this latest installment of VC Playbook, Chris Buyse – former chief financial officer of ThromboGenics – talks to In Vivo about the lessons he has learned from a career as a financial executive in the life sciences and his current venture, Fund+, a Belgian-based investment group focused on innovative companies primarily active in therapeutics R&D.

Medtech companies brought in $2.3 billion in financing in Q1 2017, a slight decrease from Q4 2016; device M&A deals totaled $5.8 billion, a sharp decline from the prior quarter, but there were some billion-dollar deals. Q1 diagnostics financings – totaling $1.2 billion (thanks to a $900 million Series B round by cancer diagnostics company Grail) – showed a significant increase over the preceding quarter, as did the Q1 M&As at $700 million versus the previous $87 million.