It turns out that even sending everyone from the CEO to rank-and-file staffers home to work in the middle of a Category 5 pandemic wasn’t enough to put a crimp in the flow of venture cash into biopharma. And even dealmaking held its own against the howling winds of misfortune — largely because a group of savvy players was quick to adjust to the new reality.

Our deal expert Chris Dokomajilar ran the numbers for us on a month-to-month basis and found that not only was venture money flowing during the panicky month of March, but it was also hitting home in record sums compared to the last 26 months of deal flow.

Say what?

As you can see in the top chart below, Dokomajilar outlined how the industry racked up $2.41 billion in total for March, just barely ahead of one other topper during the heady days of August 2018.

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A few days ago the FDA touted a procedure for Covid-19 meds that committed the agency to immediate action for developers, formalizing a high-speed response that’s been promised for weeks.

Bioregnum Opinion Column by John Carroll

Decisions that once required months would be measured in hours under the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program. “In many cases” trial protocols could be hammered out in less than a single day. If you had a potential solution to the crisis, the appropriate staffer would be in touch “to get studies underway quickly.”

It would be the ultimate high-speed regulatory pathway from Phase I to approval. Red tape was banished.

But it’s clear that for some — and quite likely many — biopharma execs, the actual agency response has not measured up to the promise. Beyond the front ranks of advanced companies in the field, like Gilead, or for drugs endorsed by President Trump, it may not even come close.

“The first response is this form letter everyone gets,” says one biotech CEO who’s reached out to the FDA on Covid-19. And when you try to cut through that, the ball gets dropped as it is passed from top officials to the frontline staff actually charged with getting things done.

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How could a small, largely unknown biotech that emerged from stealth mode just months ago with early-stage cancer programs jump onto Wall Street in the middle of a Category 6 financial hurricane and sail through with a $165 million IPO?

And what does that mean for the rest of the industry waiting to see just how much damage global lockdowns will wreak on clinical development?

The biotech is a company called Zentalis. The crew there nabbed an $85 million crossover round late last year — notably waiting 5 years before waving the numbers around to attract attention, according to my read of a FierceBiotech story. Perceptive joined in, but the syndicate was not in general the kind of marquee affair that gets tongues wagging.

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