SAN FRANCISCO – The regenerative medicine sector is on the move thanks to positive clinical data readouts, strong investor interest during 2013 and big pharma now starting to get involved in the space. This momentum will only grow going forward. That was the message coming out of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine’s (ARM) state of the industry briefing Monday at the Biotech Showcase meeting.
The biotech initial public offerings (IPO) window is still open. It had been predicted that with the record number of IPOs completed in 2013, investor fatigue might set in this year and these transactions would slow considerably. However, it didn’t take long to prove that this might not be the case.
It is that time of year again when the biotech lens sets its focus squarely on San Francisco with more than 12,000 business executives, investors and analysts heading to town for the J.P. Morgan Healthcare, Biotech Showcase and OneMedForum events. The common denominator for all these meetings is money.
The mood going into the start of the 32nd annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco will be decidedly upbeat. How could it not be? The industry is just coming off one of its best performances in decades with many of the blue chip public biotech companies recording triple digit percentage gains in their share values.
Burlington, Mass.-based Aldexa Therapeutics Inc. added itself to the crowded initial public offering (IPO) “runway,” filing its S-1 with the SEC to generate up to $20 million in an IPO.
The regular “Word on the Street” column provides the most entertaining and thought-provoking quotes that the BioWorld Today and BioWorld Insight staffs choose every week. These are taken from a variety of sources: during the course of interviews with biotech executives, from industry reports provided by analysts, and some that are gleaned at conferences.
When 2013 started no one would have predicted that we would see 37 companies focused on developing therapeutics successfully complete their initial public offerings (IPO) on the U.S. markets in the year and collectively raise approximately $3 billion in the process. The total certainly swamped the 11 U.S. IPOs completed in 2012 and put an exclamation point on the favorable capital markets, which helped to ensure that the window stayed firmly open.
With only two more trading days before the curtain drops on the year, biotech’s blue chip companies are poised to record a collective 76 percent increase in their share values. Although the group cooled off in December, with the BioWorld Blue Chip Index recording only a marginal increase of 0.4 percent, it takes nothing away from a truly remarkable 12 months for these companies and the sector itself.
The prevalence of sickle cell disease (SCD) is a challenge for the healthcare systems around the world. There are very limited treatment options and, as yet, no effective therapies that address the underlying cause of the disease.
There is no doubt that Canada is a global leader when it comes to biotech innovation. However, it’s no secret that the country has been challenged in its ability to successfully translate promising medical discoveries made at its universities and research institutions into viable commercial projects capable of attracting venture capital and industry interest.
