Financing

Public Company Edition: Cullinan and Cidara shifted their strategic directions and found investors to bring along for the ride. Also, Intra-Cellular closed a post-Phase III $575m follow-on offering and Tarsus accessed up to $200m from Pharmakon.

ARCH and Foresite incubated the company and recruited Genentech R&D veteran Marc Tessier-Lavigne to keep data generation, machine learning research and drug development under one roof.

Cidara conferred global rights to its novel antifungal to marketing partner, Mundipharma, while reacquiring a flu prophylaxis it licensed to J&J in 2021 and gaining $240m in new funding to back development.

Private Company Edition: Regeneron launched a $500m venture fund and Canaan added $100m, bringing the venture firm’s recent total to $1bn-plus. Also, incubators plan to grow over the next decade and in recent financings Avenzo raised $150m and Nvelop launched with $100m.

Clive Meanwell, former CEO of The Medicines Company, will helm the new company, backed by ARCH and other investors. He talked to Scrip about the new venture. 

The highs of the COVID-19 era, and the lows that supplanted it, are beginning to fade.

Cash-limited Organovo has an FXR agonist showing competitive efficacy and tolerability in MASH, but may need a partner to move forward in that disease as it may be prioritizing its IBD program.

Public Company Edition: This year’s newly public companies are trading an average of 9.7% below their IPO prices, including the two most recent debuts, Boundless Bio and Contineum. Also, Nkarta, Praxis and Nurix grossed $240m, $200m and $175m, respectively, in follow-on offerings.

Biopharma firms raised $6bn in the first quarter of 2024, the most of any quarter since Q2 2022. But without an increase in the number of companies raising funds, the rebound remains uneven.

Ali Mortazavi, CEO of e-therapeutics, says the RNAi specialist is delisting from AIM and describes the UK markets as “completely broken and closed” to biotech firms.

After the financing draught suffered by Korean bioventures in 2023, it now seems the VC market is poised for a recovery as investors shift attention again to the healthcare sector, with a spotlight on AI-based solutions and device firms.

While not co-developing each other’s drugs, J&J and financially troubled RallyBio are working on complementary approaches to the rare disease fetal and neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia.