As the past year de­vel­oped, it be­came clear­er that 2020 was prov­ing to be mas­sive for the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try. But just how big did the sec­tor boom?

The fi­nan­cial gu­rus over at Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank at­tempt­ed to an­swer that ques­tion Thurs­day, as their top health­care ad­vi­sors re­leased their 2020 An­nu­al Re­port. All in all, SVB has the to­tal amount raised pegged at a stag­ger­ing $16.8 bil­lion, far eclips­ing the fundrais­ing record set in 2019 and mark­ing the biggest year-over-year growth in al­most a decade.

Jonathan Nor­ris

It’s al­so the fourth straight record year in health­care VC fundrais­ing, SVB man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jonathan Nor­ris wrote in the re­port.

So what caused the boom? There were mul­ti­ple fac­tors that con­tributed, but it wasn’t that wells of cash sud­den­ly sprung up every­where. In fact, the num­ber of funds ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to life sci­ences re­mained ex­act­ly the same last year as it did in 2019.

Rather, the me­di­an deal size in 2020 — $415 mil­lion — was near­ly dou­ble that of the me­di­an $217 mil­lion a year ear­li­er. Add to that a bustling IPO mar­ket, with 2020’s record class of 84 ex­its end­ing up about twice as valu­able as 2019’s, as well as strong M&A ac­tion and the in­dus­try had it­self quite the lu­cra­tive year.

Though Nor­ris did not in­clude SPACs in his fundrais­ing fig­ures, he not­ed that there was a large up­swing in such merg­ers, with VCs and hedge funds putting to­geth­er about $2 bil­lion in deals.

The biggest growth oc­curred dur­ing the third quar­ter of 2020, with a whop­ping 482 deals tak­ing place across all health­care sec­tors. That’s the most deals by far in any quar­ter in the last three years, with on­ly 2020’s fourth quar­ter clock­ing in above 400 deals dur­ing that times­pan.

There were al­so sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es not just in Se­ries A rounds, but fol­low-on rounds as well by com­pa­nies like­ly to file for an IPO. On­col­o­gy led the way in both ar­eas: the field pulled in $1.3 bil­lion in Se­ries A fund­ing, up from $959 mil­lion in 2019, and $7.6 bil­lion in lat­er rounds and health­care deals, up from $6 bil­lion the pri­or year.

Nor­ris ad­di­tion­al­ly dis­cussed SVB’s glob­al health­care in­dex to track the per­for­mance of post-IPO com­pa­nies com­pared to the broad­er mar­ket­place. Cre­at­ed in 2018, the in­dex record­ed an over­all growth of 71% among these com­pa­nies, vast­ly out­per­form­ing the Nas­daq health­care in­dex (+31%) and S&P 500 (+15%).

These now-pub­lic com­pa­nies al­so out­per­formed the big tech quin­tet of Face­book, Ap­ple, Mi­crosoft, Google and Ama­zon, which com­bined for about 51% growth last year. Among the biggest win­ners this year were, un­sur­pris­ing­ly, firms work­ing on Covid-19 vac­cines: Mod­er­na, CanSi­no and BioN­Tech saw a col­lec­tive 508% in­crease.

Look­ing ahead to 2021, the folks at SVB don’t think the in­dus­try can quite keep up with the record-break­ing pace from 2020. But they still project a sol­id year like­ly to be in line with 2019’s $10.7 bil­lion fundrais­ing to­tal, with strong in­vest­ment pro­ject­ed to con­tin­ue both in Se­ries A and suc­ceed­ing rounds as well as a po­ten­tial 50 to 60 IPOs.

With just days before President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 booster rollout is set to go into effect, an FDA advisory committee appeared on the verge of not recommending boosters for anyone in the US before a last-minute change of wording laid the groundwork for older adults to have access to a third dose.

The FDA’s adcomm on Vaccines and Related Biological Products (VRBPAC) roundly rejected Pfizer/BioNTech booster shots for all individuals older than 16 by a 16-2 vote Friday afternoon. Soon after, however, the agency posed committee members a new question limiting booster use to the 65-and-older population and individuals at high risk of disease due to occupational exposure or comorbidities.

AstraZeneca and Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo think they’ve struck gold with their next-gen ADC drug Enhertu, which has shown some striking data in late-stage breast cancer trials and early solid tumor tests. Getting into earlier patients is now the goal, starting with Enhertu’s complete walkover of a Roche drug in second-line breast cancer revealed Saturday.

Enhertu cut the risk of disease progression or death by a whopping 72% (p=<0.0001) compared with Roche’s ADC Kadcyla in second-line unresectable and/or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer patients who had previously undergone treatment with a Herceptin-chemo combo, according to interim data from the Phase III DESTINY-Breast03 head-to-head study presented at this weekend’s #ESMO21.

In recent months, the battle for PD-(L)1 dominance has spilled over into early cancer with Merck’s Keytruda and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo all alone on the front lines. Keytruda now has another shell in its bandolier, and it could spell a quick approval.

Keytruda cut the risk of relapse or death by 35% over placebo (p=0.00658) in high-risk, stage 2 melanoma patients who had previously undergone surgery to remove their tumors, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-716 presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

Merck has worked hard to bring its I/O blockbuster Keytruda into earlier and earlier lines of therapy, and now the wonder drug appears poised to make a quick entry into early advanced cervical cancer.

A combination of Keytruda and chemotherapy with or without Roche’s Avastin cut the risk of death by 33% over chemo with or without Avastin (p=<0.001) in first-line patients with persistent, recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-826 study presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

Everest Medicines is on a roll with two licensing deals in one week.

The Shanghai-based biotech has paid Sinovent and SinoMab $12 million upfront for the rights to a BTK inhibitor for renal diseases, the company announced Thursday. The deal comes just days after Everest came away with rights to a Covid-19 vaccine in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.

Everest will pay Sinovent and SinoMab up to $549 million in milestone payments and royalties. The agreement includes tech transfer of Sinovent and SinoMab’s manufacturing process for the candidate, named XNW1011.