The biopharma market has been highly active throughout the COVID-19 pandemic with a substantial focus on strategic alliances between 2020-H1 2021. Partnership deals present exciting liquidity and risk mitigation opportunities for early-stage companies. Small molecules still comprise the largest segment of partnered drugs, but alliances for other modalities are on the rise.

Private Company Edition: Dyno’s first VC round will enable more deals for its novel AAV platform; Eikon pioneers new drug discovery technology. Also, Treeline’s early funding revealed at $211.7m; Capsida raised $140m from a VC round, AbbVie deal; and Affinia closed a $110m series B round. 

Tempest goes public via a reverse merger with Millendo. Takeda inks its ninth deal of 2021, a discovery pact with BridGene around its chemoproteomics technology.

NexHand Inc. has developed proprietary, sensor-based "smart surgical glove" technology designed to enable physicians to assess the severity of stress urinary incontinence. Its technology has been developed into two disposable products: the first is a noninvasive diagnostic tool for assessing the severity of SUI in the clinical setting, the UroGlove, and the second is a probe-based sensor for determining proper tensioning of urethral slings during surgery.