As confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 continue their downward slide, biopharma research efforts remain front and center, providing a new therapeutic for emergency use in the U.S. and high-efficacy phase III data for what could become the country’s fourth vaccine and its first protein subunit option.
While the amount of regulatory data in 2021 is up by 19% over last year, the 90 approvals by the U.S. FDA through late June is a decline of 17% over the same period in 2020, although the agency gave its blessing to the highest number of new molecular entities within the last several years.
While the number of biopharma’s nonprofit deals and grants, as well as their values, have dropped by more than 20% compared with last year, almost 71% of the combined funds are targeting COVID-19 therapeutics, vaccines and other pandemic efforts.
It has been a bumpy rollercoaster ride for many biopharma companies throughout the pandemic, but overall, the 17 firms that make up BioWorld’s Infectious Disease Index are coming out ahead this year with stocks up by 44.8%.
While biopharma deals are very much in line with the early pandemic months of 2020, mergers and acquisitions are telling a different story – one in which values are down by 76%. As of June 22, BioWorld has recorded 956 deals, including licensings, collaborations and joint ventures, valued at $80.2 billion in 2021, as well as 59 completed M&As worth $29.1 billion. In comparison with the same timeframe in 2020, the volume of both deals and M&As is down slightly by about 10 deals each, but the lack of high-value M&As, or mega-mergers worth more than $10 billion, has placed 2021 far behind last year. Deal values, however, are up by 4%.
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