The past week has seen a smor­gas­bord of big­ger-than-ex­pect­ed bio­phar­ma IPO de­buts led by Chi­nese biotech Leg­end, as in­vestors put their chips on the in­dus­try that is ex­pect­ed to be the tick­et out of the pro­tract­ed Covid-19 cri­sis — amid a broad­er mar­ket that is com­ing back to life with US busi­ness­es grad­u­al­ly re­open­ing.

The J&J-part­nered com­pa­ny not on­ly emerged with one of the largest pub­lic rais­es in biotech his­to­ry clock­ing in meaty $424 mil­lion, but saw its shares $LEGN soar more than 60% on its first day of trad­ing.

Leg­end — which si­lenced skep­tics such as ri­val Blue­bird bio’s Nick Leschly by earn­ing the part­ner­ship with J&J in an $350-mil­lion up­front deal for its CAR-T ther­a­py — had orig­i­nal­ly filed for a healthy $350 mil­lion IPO, based on a range of $18-$20. But they man­aged to rake in $23 per share, set­ting the stage for a wind­fall that eclipsed mam­moth rais­es from peers in­clud­ing Juno and Gala­pa­gos, but short of Mod­er­na’s record-set­ting $600 mil­lion in 2018.

Leg­end $36.79 open­ing trade marks a $5.0B mar­ket cap. More valu­able than blue­bird ($4.4B). Three years af­ter the fa­mous AS­CO, The Leg­end has sur­passed the birds.

— Brad Lon­car (@brad­lon­car) June 5, 2020

Leg­end’s lead ex­per­i­men­tal drug, pur­posed as the last line of de­fense for pa­tients with re­lapsed and re­frac­to­ry mul­ti­ple myelo­ma, is ex­pect­ed to be put un­der reg­u­la­to­ry re­view in the sec­ond half of 2020.

Oth­er biotech per­for­mances were al­so buoy­ant, ei­ther by pric­ing above the range or thanks to up­sized of­fer­ings.

No­var­tis-backed Pli­ant Ther­a­peu­tics, for in­stance, had pen­ciled in a $86 mil­lion raise back in May. But that ini­tial es­ti­mate, much like a clutch of oth­ers in re­cent weeks, was over­shad­owed with its ac­tu­al haul: $144 mil­lion. It priced at the high end of its range at $16, but sized up the to­tal shares of­fered to 9 mil­lion.

The South San Fran­cis­co biotech, which is al­lied with the Swiss drug­mak­er on an in­te­grin in­hibitor de­signed to tack­le fi­bro­sis as­so­ci­at­ed with NASH on the ba­sis of re­search con­duct­ed by sci­en­tif­ic co-founder Dean Shep­pard, raised $100 mil­lion ahead of the IPO in a round led by No­var­tis. The com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy, which al­so holds promise in fields such as on­col­o­gy and mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy, is fo­cused on TGF-β ac­ti­va­tion. Flaunt­ing a $577 mil­lion mar­ket cap, Pli­ant $PLRX fin­ished its first day of trad­ing up a healthy 39%.

Neigh­bor­ing biotech Ap­plied Mol­e­c­u­lar Trans­port al­so up­sized its of­fer­ing gen­er­at­ing a $154 mil­lion yield, well above its ini­tial $100 mil­lion es­ti­mate. The com­pa­ny, which jumped on the IPO band­wag­on per­haps more out of ne­ces­si­ty than am­bi­tion af­ter de­clar­ing sub­stan­tial doubts about its abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue as a go­ing con­cern at the end of the first quar­ter, has an in­flam­ma­to­ry-dis­ease fo­cused pipeline.

Its lead drug, AMT-101, is an IL-10 ag­o­nist en­gi­neered to tamp down in­flam­ma­tion in au­toim­mune dis­or­ders such as ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis and rheuma­toid arthri­tis. Shares of the ear­ly-stage drug de­vel­op­er, found­ed and led by life sci­ences con­sul­tant Tahir Mah­mood, rose $AMTI 28% on its first day, grant­i­ng it a re­spectable half a bil­lion dol­lar mar­ket cap.

Fi­nal­ly, the de­but for the first Swedish com­pa­ny to list on Nas­daq in 15 years al­so reaped gains ahead of the topline read­out of its Phase III drug ex­pect­ed by the end of this year. The com­pa­ny, Cal­lid­i­tas Ther­a­peu­tics, was ini­tial­ly eye­ing a $75 mil­lion raise but up­sized its deal to raise $90 mil­lion.

The com­pa­ny’s lead drug, Ne­fe­con, is an oral for­mu­la­tion of the cor­ti­cos­teroid budes­onide li­censed from Up­p­sala Uni­ver­si­ty. The biotech has been de­vel­op­ing the drug for use in an or­phan au­toim­mune re­nal dis­ease known as IgA nephropa­thy (IgAN). En­gi­neered as an im­muno­sup­pres­sant, the drug is de­signed to keep pa­tients from pro­gress­ing to end-stage re­nal dis­ease. Shares of the com­pa­ny $CALT ticked up about 1% on its first day, mark­ing a $476 mil­lion mar­ket cap.

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”

Blueprint Medicines announced this morning that the second part of its study on Ayvakit in non-advanced systemic mastocytosis (SM) — a rare disease in which a type of white blood cells known as mast cells builds up — met all endpoints, but the biopharma left key questions unanswered.

In 212 patients, with 141 in the treatment arm and 71 in the control arm, patients who got Ayvakit saw an average 15.6-point decrease in their symptom scores compared to a 9.2-point decrease in the placebo arm at 24 weeks. In an extension study, those on Ayvakit saw their symptom scores drop by 20.2 points by week 48.