George Scan­gos went back to Wall Street, and came back 700 mil­lion pen­nies short.

Scan­gos’ vaunt­ed start­up Vir Biotech­nol­o­gy raised $143 mil­lion in an IPO they hoped would earn $150 mil­lion. Shares were priced at $20, the low-end of the $20-$22 tar­get.

Launched with back­ing from ARCH Ven­ture’s Robert Nelsen, Masayoshi Son’s Soft­Bank Vi­sion Fund, and the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, the in­fec­tious dis­ease start­up was one of a new wave of well-re­sourced biotechs that emerged with deep enough cof­fers to pur­sue a full R&D line rather than slow­ly build their case by pick­ing off a sin­gle lead pro­gram.

By the time they were a year old, they had bagged $500 mil­lion in fi­nanc­ing and four aca­d­e­m­ic part­ner­ships,  agreed to two sep­a­rate deals worth more than $1 bil­lion apiece in po­ten­tial mile­stones, and land­ed a promi­nent ex-Bio­gen chief in Scan­gos as CEO.  They had lofty goals to match, aim­ing at such mar­quee and elu­sive dis­eases as HIV and hep B and tout­ing a feel-good “glob­al” busi­ness mod­el by which they would sell their drugs in coun­tries that could pay and let the Gates Foun­da­tion dis­trib­ute them in coun­tries that couldn’t.

The IPO promised in­vestors a peek in­to the de­tails and progress on those deals, while giv­ing Vir cash to fu­el their clin­i­cal tri­als.

Ev­i­dent­ly, the in­vestors were slight­ly un­der­whelmed.

The S-1 shows Vir had burned through $256 mil­lion and had $356.5 mil­lion on hand as of June. Pro­ceeds from the IPO are in­tend­ed to fund ear­ly tri­als for hep B can­di­dates VIR-2218 and VIR-3434, along with the flu vac­cine VIR-2482.  Fil­ings al­so showed their R&D deal with Al­ny­lam — ini­tial­ly an­nounced un­der its $1 bil­lion-plus max­i­mum pay­out — was worth on­ly $10 mil­lion up­front.

Be­fore the of­fer­ing, Nelsen owned the biggest chunk of the biotech at 27%, fol­lowed by the Soft­Bank Vi­sion Fund at 21%. Vir’s haul adds an­oth­er IPO dis­ap­point­ment for Soft­Bank, al­though it’s a gen­tle one com­pared to the CEO-top­pling We­Work quake. Vir is one of eight biotechs Soft­Bank is in­vest­ed in, in­clud­ing Vivek Ra­maswamy’s Roivant.

Scan­gos came to the com­pa­ny with a high-pro­file but less-than-flaw­less record. Al­though he helped make Tec­fidera a mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis block­buster at Bio­gen, he left the com­pa­ny in 2016 with a thin pipeline.

Just before Christmastime, Howard Federoff got a tip from Washington: There was a new virus in China. And this one could be bad.

A single news report on the virus had not yet appeared. Federoff, a neuroscientist, was briefed because years before, he was vetted as part of a group — he didn’t give a name for the group — to consult for the US government on emerging scientific issues. His day job, though, was CEO of Aspen Neurosciences, a Parkinson’s cell therapy startup that days before had come out of stealth mode and gave word to investors they were hoping to raise $70 million. That, Federoff realized, would be difficult if a pandemic shut down the global economy.

Despite worries about regulatory delays due to new work arrangements under Covid-19, the FDA appears intent to go full speed ahead with its everyday work, not only granting priority review to a stem cell therapy for acute graft versus host disease but also plotting an advisory committee meeting for it.

With a PDUFA date of September 30, the journey of the drug — remestemcel-L, or Ryoncil — could shed light on the agency’s capacity to facilitate drug development unrelated to Covid-19.

→ Flexion may be hitting the brakes on clinical trials, including one for its osteoporosis Zilretta, but that’s not stopping the biotech from plotting regulatory action in China. Hong Kong Tainuo has committed $10 million upfront to seize the development and commercialization rights to Zilretta, with plans to apply for a clinical trial in China by the end of the year. Flexion, which said it has 10 months of finished goods in the US and 12 months of active pharmaceutical ingredient available, will supply all products to the Chinese partner.