Weeks after lifting of an FDA clinical hold, CymaBay says it will resume development of its PPAR agonist in primary biliary cholangitis. It will initiate a new Phase III trial but also use data from a terminated Phase III study.

Relay raises $400m to kick off July’s second big week of US initial public offerings. Also, Ocumension and Immunotech launch Hong Kong IPOs, Amgen invests $421m in BeiGene’s $2.08bn offering, Cytokinetics gets up to $400m in deal and investment funding, and Imvax closes $111m series C round.

With COVID-19 cases about to top 12 million worldwide, efforts are continuing to identify the most promising drug candidates and to ensure that the rising star dexamethasone is made available to all.

The performance of 29 biopharma firms that launched IPOs during the first half of 2020 is staggering compared with 28 drug developers that went public in the first half of 2019 with a 10% average return.