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Finance Watch: Lots Of Money, Big And Small, Flowing Into Drug Development

 
• By Mandy Jackson

Big venture capital bets continue in biopharma, including Foresite's new $668m fund and Merck's $125m investment in Moderna, but small VC rounds could be making a comeback. In public company financings, Aslan and Evelo launched in the US, while Ascletis is testing Hong Kong’s IPO market.

Finance Watch

The frenzied flow of funds into biopharma venture capital has resulted in a lot of big bets, but recent small financings are encouraging as cash is harder to come by at the earliest stages of drug discovery and development.

Merck & Co. Inc. invested $125m in Moderna Therapeutics LLC in what the messenger RNA (mRNA)-focused firm described on May 3 as a Series H preferred equity round, which also served as an upfront fee to expand the companies' existing arrangement. For Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna, which has raised more than $2bn to date, including a $500m equity financing earlier this year, that's a small funding round

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