Amid a world that has been brought to its knees by the COVID-19 pandemic, the biopharma industry has learned how to quickly adapt under these extreme circumstances. Not only has it rapidly brought to bear huge research efforts to uncover potential therapeutics and vaccines to counter the circulating coronavirus, but also it has learned how to conduct its business activities in a completely different way. For example, the pandemic hasn't stopped biopharmas from going public, with 15 companies graduating to the public arena in June alone. These financings have contributed to the $62 billion that has been generated in combined global public and private company financings in the first half of the year.

The share prices of blue-chip biopharmaceutical companies closed out the month on a high note to contribute to their stellar collective performance during the second quarter, with the BioWorld Biopharmaceutical index increasing almost 20%.

The importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning continues to be acknowledged by drug development companies. Recently, to help accelerate the discovery of therapies to treat COVID-19, several deals have been forged to deploy those tools.

In a BIO Digital session on “The Convergence of Health and Tech: Personalizing Medicine Beyond the Imaginable,” panelist Ray Deshaies, Amgen Inc.’s senior vice president of global research, said he was excited for the future of drug research, noting that there is an evolving trend away from the development of monospecific drugs designed to exert their effect on just one specific target.

With an increasingly aging global population, neurological disorders have become a major cause of death and disability worldwide. Despite the significant investments that continue to be made in research and development in the neurological field, the discovery of new drugs targeting many CNS disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, has proved to be difficult.

Although the general markets have bounced around in June and the BioWorld Biopharmaceutical index has dipped almost 5% in the period, the uncertain capital environment has not affected investor appetite for biopharma IPOs.