Investors appear to be maintaining a bullish outlook on biopharma companies developing innovative medicines, with the BioWorld Drug Developers index currently tracking up over 5% in value so far this month heading into third-quarter earnings season.

COVID-19 continues to dominate biopharma nonprofit collaborations and grants in 2020, with the pandemic accounting for 85% of projected values reported this year, most of which have posted since the start of July.

Even though the appetite for biopharma IPOs this year has been voracious with no signs of a slowdown anytime soon, companies also have a potentially faster route to the public market using special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC) that raise money through an IPO in order to take a company public through an acquisition.

In July a major initiative of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, designed to combat the rising tide of antimicrobial resistance and accelerate the pace at which new antibiotics are discovered and brought to market, was announced. The $1 billion AMR Action Fund, supported by 23 pharma companies, was created “because there was a clear realization that we have no time to spare to address the lack of innovation in this area,” said Martin Bott, interim general manager of the fund, who described the progress being made with the fund in a fireside chat at this week’s virtual BIO Investor Forum.

While the number of FDA approvals in 2020 are lockstep in line with last year, despite disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, the amount of regulatory news this year tracked by BioWorld has risen by 43% over 2019. Compared with 2018, it is 52% higher.

In a world where the traditional way of conducting business has been disrupted for about eight months and counting, no one would have faulted the biopharmaceutical sector if its operations had been placed in a slow-down mode until the COVID-19 pandemic “all clear” had been sounded. Yet, despite the restrictions faced, companies have adapted quickly to the prevailing environment.