Financing

Private Company Edition: Scrip spoke with DDF US partner Jonathan Behr about the convergence of emerging science, venture capital investment and rising big pharma interest in neurodegeneration. Also, in recent VC financings HotSpot raised $100m, while Curie and Ablaze debuted with $75m each. 

Total of $571m raised in China from 10 venture capital and private equity funding deals betting heavily on mRNA and targeted oncology, as well as gene and cell therapies.

Join the Asia Pacific content team for a wide-ranging overview and analysis of recent developments across China, India, South Korea and Japan in the policy, regulatory, commercial and vaccines spaces over the past few months. 

After investing more than €23m in Sanifit, the Spanish firm being acquired by Vifor Pharma, Caixa Capital's director of life sciences investments spoke to Scrip about the venture capital firm's long-term approach.

The London-based biotech is hoping to turn the dream of liver organ transplant without the need for lifelong immunosuppression into reality.

Despite recent setbacks for Roche and Wave's respective antisense offerings, both those two firms and a number of other companies are trying a variety of approaches to find a treatment for Huntington's.

Private Company Edition: Recent VC financings across biopharma sectors include three major mega-rounds as Generate Biomedicines bringing in $370m, followed by $250m for Acelyrin and $125m for Chroma Medicine. Also, Treadwell raised a $91m series B and Ncardia brought in $60m-plus.

Public Company Edition: SVB Leerink predicts a rebound from an ongoing trough in biotech stock valuations during the second quarter of 2022. Also, Vaxxinity launched the third US IPO of November, bringing the year’s total to 102 and BridgeBio led recent financings with a $750m debt agreement. 

Financing for Korean bioventures and pharma firms remained strong this year amid ample liquidity and strong investor sentiment in the sector. SK Bioscience's IPO was the top fundraiser in 2021, followed by HK inno.N’s offering, while GI Innovation raised the most money from venture capital sources.

China opens the Beijing Stock Exchange to boost direct funding for innovation-driven small- and medium-size enterprises. But a closer look at the listings shows that biotech firms will largely miss the party.

The listings of two vaccine manufacturers and fundraisings by seven other biopharma ventures generate around $1.2bn in new financing for Chinese companies focusing on a broad variety of therapeutic areas and indicating continued investor interest. 

Private Company Edition: Arbor is developing drugs based on proprietary gene editors, Acrivon is applying proteomics to precision cancer therapies, and bit.bio is producing differentiated cell products. Also, Marengo launches with $80m, Sanofi invests up to $60m in Gyroscope and Shasqi raises $50m.