Alk­er­mes sub­mits long await­ed NDA for schiz­o­phre­nia, bipo­lar drug; Is a uni­corn bub­ble drag­ging the IPO mar­ket?

→ The Alk­er­mes $ALKS team — who back in Ju­ly laid out their plans to add bipo­lar I dis­or­der to their list of con­di­tions for ALKS-3831 (olan­za­p­ine/sami­dor­phan), which they planned to pitch to the FDA in Q4 — has an­nounced that they have sub­mit­ted an NDA for the drug as a treat­ment of schiz­o­phre­nia and bipo­lar I dis­or­der.

→ Pri­vate uni­corns have been grow­ing since the pas­sage of JOBS Act in 2012, ac­cord­ing to Re­nais­sance Cap­i­tal, from un­der 25 back then to over 200 to­day in the US alone. But the bub­ble of over-val­ued star­tups, en­abled by a pro­vi­sion al­low­ing for many more share­hold­ers in a com­pa­ny be­fore it goes pub­lic, are start­ing to have neg­a­tive ef­fects on the IPO mar­ket, the re­search firm said in a new re­port. As high-fly­ing uni­corns strug­gle to find more back­ers to buy in­to their val­u­a­tions, uni­corns have been ap­ply­ing to list at a rel­a­tive­ly slow pace. While the re­port fo­cused on the larg­er trends, biotech has seen its fair share of uni­corn IPOs this year, some of whom had to trim their val­u­a­tions at their pub­lic de­buts, like BioN­Tech and Vir Biotech­nol­o­gy.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER