Biotech companies generated $5 billion in the first quarter of 2013, just 3 percent less than the $5. 15 billion raised in the first quarter last year. The heavy lifting for the period was carried out by public companies, which were responsible for 65 percent of the total.
Biotech companies generated $5 billion in the first quarter of 2013, just 3 percent less than the $5.15 billion raised in the first quarter last year. The heavy lifting for the period was carried out by public companies, which were responsible for 65 percent of the total.
It has been a great quarter for public biotech companies as the sector continued to remain hot with investors. Large biotech companies, with market caps greater than $1 billion, collectively saw their share prices jump by an average of 21.5 percent in the first quarter.
A recently released UK House of Lords Committee report revealed that it is very worried about aging and said that the government is woefully underprepared for a rapidly greying population. The report identifies how England will see a 50 percent rise in the number of those aged 65 and older, and a 100 percent increase in those aged 85 and older by the year 2030.
The emergence of a potential pandemic has always been a favorite topic for Hollywood, which has given us some good films in the genre in recent years such as The Andromeda Strain, Outbreak and Contagion.
Antibiotic drug developer Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Watertown, Mass., joined recent publicly listed antibiotic-focused biotechnology companies Trius Therapeutics Inc. (2010) and Cempra Inc. (2012) by pricing its initial public offering (IPO) Wednesday. The company also achieved its objective of raising $75 million.
Biotech continues to be the hot sector with investors. With just two more weeks to go before the end of the first quarter the BioWorld Stock Report has recorded an average 18 percent share price increase year-to-date for the 233 public biotechnology companies, which the report tracks.
While another storm that hit the East Coast of the U.S. served to delay the scheduled FDA Pulmonary-Allergy Drugs Advisory Committee (PADAC) meeting last week, South San Francisco-based Theravance Inc. and its partner GlaxoSmithKline plc, of London, shouldn't have too much longer to wait for what is predicted to be a positive review from the PADAC for their once-daily inhaled corticosteroid.
Somewhere along the way from the heady days of the dot-com era in 2000 the "magic" of achieving a successful biotech initial public offering (IPO) seems to have been lost. Time was that for biotech companies and the venture capitalists who invested in them, a public stock offering was the first major milestone of business and financial success – a preferred exit strategy for VCs and an opportunity for companies to access future public market capital financings and adequately fund their product pipeline development.
The field of hepatitis C virus (HCV) research is hot. So hot, in fact, that in January the BioWorld Today staff ranked the unfolding story of the exceptional performance of HCV potential treatments from the clinic in second place in the top 10 most impactful stories of last year. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 2, 2013.)
