Bristol Myers backs a European VC’s record-setting biotech venture fund, which tops out at $600M

March 10, 2020 06:52 AM EDTUpdated 07:25 AM

John Carroll

Bristol Myers backs a European VC's record-setting biotech venture fund, which tops out at $600M

A European biotech venture group with a yen for transatlantic deals will face whatever is coming on the investment side of the business with a new fund that claims boasting rights as the largest life sciences fund ever raised on the continent.

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April 3, 2020 09:33 AM EDT

John Carroll

Bioregnum

IPOs

A small, obscure biotech just won big with their IPO. In this market. Are you kidding me?

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 Force 5 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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Bob Nelsen at the Milken Institute Global Conference on April 29, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images)

April 2, 2020 06:00 AM EDTUpdated 09:59 AM

John Carroll

Venture

ARCH chief Bob Nelsen has $1.5B to prove 2 simple points: ‘We’re in the most innovative time ever’ and investors are staying

ARCH co-founder and managing director Bob Nelsen has a well known yen for the home run swing, betting big on potentially transformative meds and tech and the biotech teams he helps bring together. He thrives and bleeds on the cutting edge. And now Nelsen and the ARCH group have debuted 2 big funds to prove that this is the time for the best of biotech to shine — deadly pandemic be damned.

Two new funds, ARCH Venture Fund X and ARCH Venture Fund X Overage, gathered a combined $1.46 billion. And that’s a record. ARCH Venture Fund IX and ARCH Venture Fund IX Overage closed in 2016 with a combined $1.1 billion. ARCH Venture Fund VIII and ARCH Venture Fund VIII Overage closed in 2014 with a combined $560 million.

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Aaron Royston, venBio

April 3, 2020 08:35 AM EDTUpdated 08:47 AM

Natalie Grover

In Focus

Venture

Investing in the time of coronavirus: the good, the bad and the hopeful, as biotech VC firms close funds worth $3B

Apart from disrupting biopharma R&D and regulatory timelines, the coronavirus pandemic has inevitably ravaged financial markets and eroded investor risk appetite. Investing in the time of coronavirus feels reckless, but if biotech venture funds are any indication, the time is ripe.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Principal - Alexandria LaunchLabs

Alexandria Real Estate Equities

San Francisco, CA

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April 3, 2020 07:39 AM EDTUpdated 09:19 AM

Endpoints Staff

Coronavirus

R&D

Covid-19 roundup: Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel becomes a billionaire; Novartis, Incyte pitch Jakafi PhIII to tackle severe cases

You can now add Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel to the list of biotech billionaires.

Since investors began to understand the full scope of the coronavirus outbreak in late February, cash has flushed out of much of the stock market and into the handful of companies leading the fight for drugs and vaccines. That’s meant hundreds of millions for Moderna, the Flagship-backed company that emerged early as the world’s first best hope for a Covid-19 vaccine.

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April 3, 2020 07:29 AM EDT

Jason Mast

Deals

J&J gives pioneering stem cell biotech its first Big Pharma deal, partnering on iPSC CAR-T and CAR-NK

Late last summer, one of the earliest stem cell therapy companies got two government decisions in the span of three weeks: The USPTO granted them a patent for iPSC-derived CAR-T cells, and then the FDA cleared them for their first-in-human CAR-NK trial.

Yesterday, the two technologies landed them an up-to $3.1 billion deal.

Fate Therapeutics and J&J announced a global collaboration that will pay Fate $100 million upfront and a trove of potential milestones to develop multiple CAR-T and CAR-NK therapies. It’s the first Big Pharma partnership Fate has announced in their 13-year existence and the largest, although at least one longtime follower thought they could have landed more.

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April 2, 2020 06:23 PM EDTUpdated 2 hours ago

Endpoints Contributor

Biotech Voices

Coronavirus

Drug discovery in the age of coronavirus

Developing new drugs is incredibly hard. That’s why, despite superhuman efforts from the industry, we’re still looking at 12-18 months minimum before we can realistically hope for a vaccine for Covid-19, and probably months before there’s a proven viable drug treatment.

But our increasing ability to begin to industrialize the drug discovery and development process through an engineering approach means that we have more hope for speeding up this process than ever before — and not just to defeat coronavirus, but to benefit the development of all new medicines in the future.

April 1, 2020 07:26 AM EDTUpdated 09:47 AM

John Carroll

Coronavirus

Regulatory

UPDATED: Have a new drug that promises to fight Covid-19? The FDA promises fast action but some developers aren't happy

After providing an emergency approval to use malaria drugs against coronavirus with little actual evidence of their efficacy or safety in that setting, the FDA has already proven that it has set aside the gold standard when it comes to the pandemic. And now regulators have spelled out a new approach to speeding development that promises immediate responses in no uncertain terms — promising a program offering the ultimate high-speed pathway to Covid-19 drug approvals.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Executive Director/Vice President of Business Development

Caribou Biosciences, Inc.

Berkeley, CA

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March 31, 2020 10:15 AM EDTUpdated 11:38 AM

John Carroll

Regulatory

Once furious over Novartis’ data manipulation scandal, the FDA now says it’s nothing they need to take action on

Back in the BP era — Before Pandemic — the FDA ripped Novartis for its decision to keep the agency in the dark about manipulated data used in its application for Zolgensma while its marketing application for the gene therapy was under review.

Civil and criminal sanctions were being discussed, the agency noted in a rare broadside at one of the world’s largest pharma companies. Notable lawmakers cheered the angry regulators on, urging the FDA to make an example of Novartis, which fielded Zolgensma at $2.1 million — the current record for a one-off therapy.

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March 31, 2020 07:21 AM EDTUpdated April 1, 04:19 AM

Endpoints Staff

Coronavirus

Covid-19 roundup: GSK, Amgen tailor R&D work to fit the coronavirus age; Doudna's genomics crew launches diagnostic lab

You can add Amgen and GSK to the list of deep-pocket drug R&D players who are tailoring their pipeline work to fit a new age of coronavirus.

Following in the footsteps of a lineup of big players like Eli Lilly — which has suspended patient recruitment for drug studies — Amgen and GSK have opted to take a more tailored approach. Amgen is intent on circling the wagons around key studies that are already fully enrolled, and GSK has the red light on new studies while the pandemic plays out.

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