Deals show large investors’ appetite for early-stage biotech, but can VC and PE rub along?

French biotech brings candidate for Gaucher and Parkinson’s disease in-house under 2020 pact with Weizmann. Cellevolve, Seattle Children’s partner on cell therapies for CNS cancers.

Tapping into Abingworth’s pioneering clinical co-development model, the private equity behemoth is using that experience to form Launch Therapeutics which will seek to partner with biotech and biopharma on "best‐in‐class, late‐stage clinical assets [and] bring life‐saving therapies to market better, faster and cheaper."

A NASDAQ listing has been the pinnacle for non-US biotech companies because it brings access to more specialist investors and a larger capital base. But the appetite for – and aftermarket performance of – this biotech tourism is cycle-dependent.