Indoor dining at restaurants and bars is shutting down again as the COVID-19 pandemic worsens in the US as numbers of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus reach new daily highs, and most companies remain in work-from-home mode or are running at reduced capacity while the country awaits a significant improvement in the virus’ spread. The economic impact has been devastating across most sectors of the global economy, but the biopharmaceutical sector remains an outlier with drug makers’ stock prices rising, opening up big fundraising opportunities.
Finance Watch: Up, Up And Away – Biopharma Stocks Keep Rising
Public Company Edition: Drug developers continue to take advantage of investors’ preference for biotechnology investments, with CRISPR, Acceleron and BioNTech raising massive sums. The wealth isn’t spreading to everyone, however, as DBV Technologies is restructuring and cutting jobs.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The US FDA approved anti-CD19 antibody Uplizna, from Amgen’s $27.8bn purchase of Horizon in 2023, for IgG4-related disease – a larger market than its original NMOSD indication.
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BeiGene’s Phase III ociperlimab joins the list of failed TIGIT inhibitors, as candidates from Roche, Merck & Co. and others have failed late-stage studies.
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It might be the beginning of the end for the orphan drugs party but there is still sales growth enjoyment to be had for the sector, whose star performers are now looking increasingly like mainstream drugs.