Im­muno­core ap­pears to be the lat­est domi­no to fall around Neil Wood­ford’s de­ba­cle as it so­lic­its new back­ing at a dras­ti­cal­ly low­er val­u­a­tion.

Eliot Forster F-star

Once a star in the UK biotech scene, Im­muno­core fetched $320 mil­lion to launch a sprawl­ing op­er­a­tion around TCR re­search and its val­u­a­tion had once reached near­ly $1 bil­lion (£800m). But that fig­ure has been slashed to around $621 mil­lion (£500 mil­lion) in its lat­est fi­nanc­ing, the Tele­graph re­port­ed.

New York-based Gen­er­al At­lantic has com­mit­ted an ini­tial £60 mil­lion to what is shap­ing up to be a £100 mil­lion round, the news­pa­per added.

Signs of trou­ble at Im­muno­core first emerged well be­fore the Wood­ford fall­out. Eliot Forster hit the ex­it last Feb­ru­ary just as he was sup­pos­ed­ly putting to­geth­er an­oth­er megaround for the com­pa­ny, and an ex­ec­u­tive ex­o­dus fol­lowed. Sev­er­al peo­ple fa­mil­iar with in­ter­nal talks pre­vi­ous­ly told End­points News that the biotech was hav­ing a hard time stick­ing with its high-end uni­corn val­u­a­tion, lead­ing to the de­par­tures.

Bahi­ja Jal­lal

Bahi­ja Jal­lal, for­mer pres­i­dent of the now-de­funct Med­Im­mune unit at As­traZeneca, has since tak­en over as CEO. Re­as­sur­ance to in­vestors and sta­bil­i­ty would be key to her tenure, she said when she joined in Jan­u­ary.

Wood­ford’s high pro­file in­volve­ment with the com­pa­ny didn’t help. A cut in Im­muno­core’s val­u­a­tion could put more strain on Wood­ford as he looks to cash out some pri­vate hold­ings in search of liq­uid­i­ty for his Eq­ui­ty In­come fund, which was abrupt­ly sus­pend­ed back in June. He has vowed to re­open the fund in De­cem­ber — pro­vid­ed he se­cures enough cash to meet any re­demp­tions that dis­grun­tled in­vestors would re­quest once they get the chance.

In an in­ter­im re­port pub­lished in Ju­ly, the fund put the val­ue of its Im­muno­core shares at £23 mil­lion, down from £45 mil­lion at the end of last year.

Adam Stoten Ox­ford

Co-in­vestors have blamed Wood­ford for steep drops in the over­all val­ue of some biotechs their port­fo­lios share with his, as his well-pub­li­cized woes shake oth­ers’ con­fi­dence in com­pa­nies he has stakes in. Most re­cent­ly, Benev­o­len­tAI bagged $90 mil­lion with its val­u­a­tion halved. Ox­ford Nanopore, a DNA se­quenc­ing com­pa­ny, is al­so ap­par­ent­ly be­ing prepped for auc­tion.

Adam Stoten, the chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer at Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s spin­out of­fice, said in an in­ter­view with the Tele­graph they are hav­ing to “weath­er the storm” and di­ver­si­fy their in­vestor base af­ter years of re­ceiv­ing in­vest­ment from Wood­ford.

The Endpoints News team is continuing to track IPO filings for 2021, and we’ve designed a new tracker page for the effort.

Check it out here: Biopharma IPOs 2021 from Endpoints News

You’ll be able to find all the biotechs that have filed and priced so far this year, sortable by quarter and listed by newest first. As of the time of publishing on Feb. 25, there have already been 16 biotechs debuting on Nasdaq so far this year, with an additional four having filed their S-1 paperwork.

Back in April 2018, just before Foresite Capital unveiled its $668 million Fund IV and a strategy to focus on tech-driven life science bets, one of its portfolio companies quietly made an announcement.

Fount Therapeutics, a drug discovery outfit backed by Foresite and Eshelman Ventures, had raised $22 million in Series A cash to hatch several fledgling spinouts. “The first ‘NewCo,’ Kinnate, will be focused on developing precision oncology treatments,” read a press release.

S&P Global has taken a look at the dominant forces shaping the pharma market and come to the conclusion that there will be more downgrades than upgrades in 2021 — the 8th straight year of steady decline.

But it’s not all bad news. Some things are looking up, and there’s still plenty of money to be made in an industry that enjoys a 30% to 40% profit margin, once you factor in steep R&D expenses.