Public and private biotech companies are still having no difficulty raising cash despite the horrendous performance of the capital markets during the third quarter. The sector collectively raised a whopping $34 billion, an amount swollen by three major debt offerings.

Private companies enjoyed another highly successful quarter attracting venture investments that totaled more than $2.2 billion to bring the year-to-date total for this category of financing to more than $7 billion, an amount that establishes a new high water mark for private financing by the industry.

In the third quarter private global biotechs concluded a total of 59 deals compared to 66 deals completed in the third quarter of 2014. Despite the lower number, the amount raised was almost 86 percent higher than the amount raised in the period last year.

Interestingly, the number of overseas biotech companies raising private capital has remained steady year-over-year, according to BioWorld Snapshots data, at around 30 percent.

In fact taking top spot for the amount raised during the period was Oxford, U.K.-based Immunocore Ltd., which broke the existing European record for a private round, raising $320 million to fund the rapid acceleration of its T-cell receptor immuno-oncology portfolio again reinforcing the intense global interest investors have in this space. (See BioWorld Today, July 17, 2015.)

The proceeds will enable clinical development of its lead program IMCgp100, both as a monotherapy and in combination, which has delivered positive phase I/IIa data in advanced metastatic melanoma.

European biotech ADC Therapeutics Sarl, of Copenhagen, Denmark, raised $80 million in a private round to help fund lead product ADCT-301, an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) targeting the CD25 antigen, which is over-expressed in some lymphomas. It is now in two U.S. trials in relapsed or refractory Hodgkin's lymphoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and the firm plans to open further U.S. and European sites subject to the results of the initial 58-patient dose-escalation studies.

Another technology that is keeping investors engaged is genome-editing. Start-up Editas Medicine Inc. managed to attract $120 million in an oversubscribed series B financing to advance its discovery-stage programs and platform in the quarter's largest private financing in the U.S. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 11, 2015.)

The focus of Cambridge, Mass.-based company is to translate its CRISPR (clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)/Cas9 (CRISPR associated protein 9) technology into a new class of medicines intended to treat a broad range of diseases through corrective molecular modifications at the genetic level.

Though still at the early stages of development, Editas said it is already making significant progress on fine-tuning in-house programs to address sickle cell anemia and a form of Leber congenital amaurosis, a rare retinal disease that causes severe vision loss.

Other notable financings in the U.S. also included companies in the immuno-oncology space. Syndax Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Waltham, Mass., for example, completed an $80 million series C financing round. The proceeds, together with cash on hand, will fund the continued development of its product candidate, entinostat, which is being evaluated in combination with Kenilworth, N.J.-based Merck & Co. Inc.'s anti-PD-1 inhibitor, Keytruda (pembrolizumab), in a phase Ib/II trial in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer or melanoma. The dosing of the first patients in the trial, designated ENCORE 601, by Syndax and KEYNOTE 142 by Merck, has started. It is evaluating the safety, tolerability and efficacy of entinostat. The compound is also currently being evaluated in a pivotal phase III trial in combination with Aromasin (exemestane tablets) to treat advanced HR+ breast cancer.

Deciphera Pharmaceuticals LLC raised $75 million from a series B round aimed at getting its lead switch control kinase inhibitor candidates through proof of concept and moving others into human testing.

Its most advanced compound, altiratinib, with a study testing the drug in patients with solid tumors and a planned expansion phase, will involve patients with actionable MET genomic alterations.