Financing

Two IPOs and 12 venture capital and private equity deals in China raised a combined $1bn in a hectic few weeks of October.

Early COVID-19 therapies including Gilead’s remdesivir, China-plus procurement policies, vaccine partnerships and a dovish stance by the central bank led to returns on India biotech and healthcare funds outperforming global returns. Meanwhile, funding for e-pharmacies and online consulting firms gathered pace.

Public Company Edition: Xilio, Ventyx, MiNK and Context went public in the US and later traded at or above their initial public offering prices. Also, Sarepta raised $500m and Relay grossed $350m in new offerings, while Oncopeptides, Esperion, Zymergen and Ardelyx reorganized and cut jobs.

Private Company Edition: The industry raised $28bn in venture capital through the third quarter, breaking the record $27.4bn raised last year. Also, big pharmas backed a start-up lab in Israel, plus mega-rounds for CinCor Pharma ($143m) and Rectify Pharmaceuticals ($100m), while Cerecin raises $40m.

From the latest COVID-19 advances to the emergence of a game changer for heart failure, Scrip’s editor in chief Eleanor Malone reviews the big stories of the past three months. Safety issues around JAK inhibitors and AAV vector-based gene therapy were also to the fore, while biopharma financing continued apace.

A concerted effort to mobilize the pharma industry, research organizations and state-backed healthcare venture capital firms is under way in Shanghai.

Gene therapy remains attractive when data show new technologies can advance the field, but gene regulation, editing and RNA therapies are grabbing investors’ attention, panelists said at ARM’s Cell and Gene Meeting on the Mesa.

A combined $447.2m are raised through a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) and venture capital and private equity deals.

Also, two more health care-focused SPACs went public, Centessa obtained up to $300m in debt, three new venture capital funds launched and Intergalactic debuted with a $75m series A round.

Combining biological insights with data science, the start-up emerges from stealth mode after two years of assembling its technology platform and R&D pipeline based on internal and external know-how.

The UK firm has not completed a clinical trial yet but having raised over $350m from its NASDAQ initial public offering and an extra $160m from a private placement, Exscientia's future looks extremely bright.

Emerging Company Profile: Switzerland-based Anjarium Biosciences AG has successfully raised $61m in a series A financing that will fund expansion of its novel proprietary platform and development of a nascent pipeline of non-viral gene therapies.