In a relatively light news flow for the group last month, the gainers and decliners in the BioWorld Neurological Diseases index canceled themselves out during August, with the result that the price-weighted index closed relatively flat and, despite briefly moving into positive territory in July, its value is down 4% for the year.

Although investors’ enthusiasm has cooled toward the biopharma sector, particularly large cap companies, over the past couple of months, they haven’t neglected it entirely and have been willing to reward those companies reporting positive news about their pipeline progress. As a result, a number of companies returned significant gains in their share valuations in August, contributing to the BioWorld Drug Developers index pushing more than 4% higher in the period and up 6% year-to-date.

Biogen Inc., one the world's top neurological disease specialists, is committing to invest more than $1 billion in cash and equity in Denali Therapeutics Inc. for rights to co-develop and co-commercialize a potential therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD) and options to secure up to four more neurodegenerative disease programs from its new partner.

With an increasingly aging global population, neurological disorders have become a major cause of death and disability worldwide. Despite the significant investments that continue to be made in research and development in the neurological field, the discovery of new drugs targeting many CNS disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, has proved to be difficult.

Investors have grown accustomed to hearing news of major announcements from big pharma and blue chip biotech companies during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference week. However, as it turned out, headline catalysts were in short supply. In the absence of any major M&A deals taking place, the event turned out to be unusually muted.