Finance Watch: Rhythm And OptiNose IPOs Bring 2017 Total To 31, Surpassing 2016

Public Company Financings: Rhythm and OptiNose are the 30th and 31st initial public offerings of 2017. Also, reverse mergers add two more newly public firms, Valeant raises $1bn to pay down more debt, and PhaseRx and Trevena cut jobs.

Finance Watch

This year's tally of biopharmaceutical initial public offerings in the US was tied with 2016's total of 30 IPOs when Rhythm Pharmaceuticals Inc. went public on Oct. 5, but 2017 outpaced last year when OptiNose Inc. launched its IPO on Oct. 12.

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Finance Watch: As Stocks Tumble, Offerings Slow, Financial Alternatives Rise

 
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Public Company Edition: Stock valuations are falling due to political, economic and regulatory uncertainty, resulting in fewer large public offerings, more alternative financings and cost cuts. Carisma, Tenaya, BioAtla, Arbutus, Nkarta, Alector and Adaptimmune announced layoffs.

AIRNA To Take RNA Editing Into The Clinic With $155m Series B Round

 
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CEO Kris Elverum told Scrip about the start-up’s platform for editing RNA to correct genetic variants that cause harm and to reproduce healthy variants as a means of treating disease.

Isomorphic Adds To Growing AI War Chest With First External Funding Round

 

The four-year-old firm said it plans to advance programs toward the clinic from the funding round, which comes just over a year after signing two major pharma partnerships.

Finance Watch: European And Japanese Biotechs See VC Investor Interest In March

 
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Private Company Edition: The latest group of drug developers to announce venture capital financings is remarkable for its geographic diversity, from Character Biosciences’ $93m series B round in the US to Augustine’s $85m series B in Belgium to a $29.2m series C for Aculys in Japan.

More from Business

Boehringer Boss Talks Tariffs And State Of Play In The US

 
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The German firm’s chairman, Hubertus von Baumbach, is adopting a ‘wait-and-see’ approach to the threat of pharma tariffs.

Trump Tariffs – Indian Pharma Dodges Bullet, But Sword Still Hangs?

 
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Trump announced a 26% reciprocal tariff on India but a country-agnostic exemption of pharmaceuticals implies that the interests of Indian firms and the US consumer are protected for now. What is Indian pharma’s business exposure and what is domestic industry saying?

Pharma Exhales, Dodging A Financial Blow With Tariff Exemption

 

Industry lobbied for pharmaceuticals to be exempt from Trump’s sweeping US tariffs and the effort appears to have paid off. J&J, Lilly and Merck & Co. even got shout outs.