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.

Although the volume of med-tech deals and mergers and acquisitions in 2020 rival each of the last two years, the level of disclosed values has fallen far short of 2019 in both instances.

The appetite for biopharma IPOs this year has been voracious with no signs of a slowdown anytime soon. Year-to-date, a total of $14.63 billion was raised from 66 new global issues, a total that is already well ahead of the $10.7 billion in 2018, from 80 transactions, that represented the previous record for IPOs. In terms of volume, BioWorld has recorded that the highest number of IPOs in a single year was 84 in 2014, followed by 83 in 2000.