Plus deals involving Menarini/VenatoRx, Orion/Glykos, Roche/MOMA, Janssen/Elektrofi, Galapagos/BridGene along with 13 other transactions.

GSK takes equity stake in Spero, and global rights to tebipenem except for certain Asian markets. Merck KGaA gets rights to Nerviano’s next-generation PARP inhibitor for cancer.

The average return for the 54 drug developers that went public in the US during first three quarters of 2018 was 13.6% as of Oct. 1 versus 16.9% as of Aug. 31 for the 47 biopharma firms that launched IPOs during the first eight months of this year. September had seven new offerings after just two in August.

Biopharma financing finished off 2017 strong with a total value of $14.5 billion in Q4, led again by FOPOs. CVS' massive $77 billion acquisition of Aetna resulted in an all-time quarterly high in the M&A category, and the largest alliances were dominated by the development of vaccines and antibodies.