January is historically the weakest month of the year for FDA approvals and 2021 is following that trend. With only nine approvals tracked by BioWorld during the month, it falls short of the 12 approvals during the same month in 2020, and it is the lowest amount in a single month since January of 2019, which also recorded nine.

A quick look back at top stories.

The top 10 biopharma stock gainers and losers for the week.

BioWorld tracked a total of 295 phase I, II and III clinical news items in January, a rise of 39% compared with the number recorded during the pre-pandemic month of January 2020.

Biopharmaceutical companies developing cancer therapies had a productive year with about 38% of the record 53 new medicines approved by the FDA targeting oncology indications. This was one of the contributing factors for the 21% growth in the valuation of the price weighted BioWorld Cancer index in 2020.

A quick look back at top stories.

Following a $59.7 billion record-breaking year, med-tech financings in 2021 have already raised 56% more than the amount recorded during the pre-pandemic early weeks of 2020.