DUBLIN – The biotechnology sector may be more awash with cash now than at any other time in its history. But that does not alter the fundamental dynamic between biotech and big pharma. If anything, their respective roles are becoming better defined, as biotechs learn how to build value into their assets to the point where big pharma is willing to step in and take on the financial risk of scaling a program where it can truly go global.
DUBLIN – In what continues to be a year like no other, European biotechnology firms engaged in drug development raised $4.783 billion in equity financing during the third quarter. It is an unprecedented level of funding for the sector.
Amid a world that has been brought to its knees by the COVID-19 pandemic, the biopharma industry has learned how to quickly adapt under these extreme circumstances. Not only has it rapidly brought to bear huge research efforts to uncover potential therapeutics and vaccines to counter the circulating coronavirus, but also it has learned how to conduct its business activities in a completely different way. For example, the pandemic hasn't stopped biopharmas from going public, with 15 companies graduating to the public arena in June alone. These financings have contributed to the $62 billion that has been generated in combined global public and private company financings in the first half of the year.
DUBLIN – Biogeneration Ventures (BGV) raised €105 million (US$118.7 million) for its fourth fund, further brightening the prospects for early stage investing in European biotech. The fund’s closing immediately follows that of Epidarex Capital, which earlier this week announced it had raised £102.1 million (US$126.3 million) for its third fund.
Up-and-coming cell and gene engineering company Sana Biotechnology Inc. raised $700 million in a first round financing, bumping Moderna Inc., which previously had the highest venture capital (VC) financing of a traditional biotech company to date.
DUBLIN – After 18 months in stealth mode, Ventus Therapeutics Inc. has emerged with $60 million in series A funding and big ambitions to bring insights from structural biology to bear on two key aspects of innate immunity, inflammasome activation and cGAS-Sting signaling.
DUBLIN – Genespire Srl, a Milan-based startup led by gene therapy pioneer Luigi Naldini, is the third company to receive funding from Sofinnova Partners’ Italian €108 million (US$117.5 million) gene therapy fund, the Sofinnova Telethon Fund.
LONDON – The U.K. treasury announced a £500 million (US$622.5 million) COVID-19 bailout plan for research-based startups, which could see the government holding equity stakes in venture capital-backed firms.
Although public offerings slowed considerably in March as a result of the steepest stock market declines in history during that period, global biopharmaceutical companies managed to collectively generate just over $16 billion in the first quarter from a record number public and private transactions. Only the first quarter of 2018 saw more cash raised in the past decade, according to BioWorld data.
DUBLIN – The middle of a pandemic may not be the optimal time to launch an oncology-focused company, but Klosterneuburg, Austria-based Oncoone Research & Development GmbH unveiled a €13 million (US$14.1 million) series A round Wednesday, March 18, and laid out plans to develop several different approaches to targeting an immunologically distinct form of a ubiquitous inflammatory cytokine, which is unique to cancer cells and which is associated with a poor prognosis.
