While a number of analysts report that their investors show no signs of panic after the late February meltdown in all biotech stocks, they remain nervous about the sector wondering if its tremendous performance over the past two years has finally come to an end. The two-day exodus from biotech certainly contributed to ugly returns in March.

A robust deal flow defined the first quarter of the year, which saw 60 global private biotech companies generate more than $1 billion. Not a bad haul and two and half times the amount generated in the same period last year from 45 deals.

The biotech sector has had, by its standards, a very disappointing month and company executives and investors alike will be hoping that the worst is over.

New Haven, Conn.-based Kolltan Pharmaceuticals Inc., a private company developing monoclonal antibody (MAb) drugs that will target receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs), has secured $60 million from a series D financing round, which will help support phase II trials of KTN3379, an inhibitor of the ErbB3 receptor tyrosine kinase, their lead dual-mechanism MAb candidate in cancer patients suffering from various malignancies.

It is alliteratively satisfying to combine “biotech” with “bubble,” and the two words have been bandied around frequently for the past couple of days causing massive trading in biotech shares that has resulted in the largest two-day declines that biotech indices have experienced since early 2012.

The marathon bull run for biotech’s elite companies has pushed into 2014 and, year to date, BioWorld’s Blue Chip Biotech Index, a price-weighted index that includes 19 of the top biotechnology companies as rated by market cap, is up 17 percent. The index has grown in value an incredible 105 percent since the beginning of 2013, considerably outpacing the general markets with the Dow Jones Industrial average (DJIA) recording a 25 percent increase and the Nasdaq Composite index a 43 percent jump in value in the same period. YTD, the DJIA index has dropped in value 1.5 percent and the Nasdaq Composite index has recorded a 3.5 percent increase.

Rare disease therapies are by their nature expensive. Companies that attach high price tags to their approved medicines argue that they need to recoup their research and development investment costs with an economic model that takes into account the very small patient populations for which their drugs are targeted. The absence of competition within the small market segment also allows the drug developer plenty of room to establish annual treatment costs. However, could a competitive environment affect that model?

It is no secret that pharmaceutical and biotech companies are beginning to invest heavily in the rare disease space. One of the attractions is that orphan drugs, developed for the treatment of rare and ultra-rare disorders, tend to be very expensive, where single patient costs can reach $350,000 and above per year.

Louisville, Colo.-based Globeimmune Inc. dipped its toe in the initial public offering (IPO) waters a couple of years ago and found the temperature too cold to dive in, eventually withdrawing its offering late last year.

The term “big data” captures our imagination – conjuring up supercomputers crunching numbers that spit out information that will set drug developers on the right development path toward exciting new blockbuster medicines. Being able to harness and mine the utility of big data will be critical for innovative drug development going forward.