It’s clear by now that bio­phar­ma ex­pe­ri­enced a mas­sive boom in 2020, but a new re­port out Thurs­day says the Mass­a­chu­setts hub was par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful.

The trade group Mass­Bio re­leased its lat­est in­dus­try snap­shot, sum­ma­riz­ing the last cal­en­dar year as the most suc­cess­ful for the Mass­a­chu­setts bio­phar­ma sec­tor. Over­all, Mass­a­chu­setts-based biotechs raised $5.8 bil­lion in 2020, mark­ing a hefty 93% in­crease from the pre­vi­ous year.

Kendalle Burlin O’Con­nell

That fig­ure breaks all records kept by the or­ga­ni­za­tion, clock­ing in at 21% high­er than the old record of $4.8 bil­lion set in 2018.

Thurs­day’s re­port “re­flects how 2020 was a tremen­dous year, es­pe­cial­ly with the chal­lenges giv­en by Covid,” Mass­Bio pres­i­dent Kendalle Burlin O’Con­nell told End­points News. “The abil­i­ty to re­spond with mul­ti­ple vac­cines and ther­a­peu­tics was able to re­al­ly gen­er­ate con­fi­dence in the R&D abil­i­ties, in­ter­est that led to the record-break­ing in­vest­ment.”

So where did the mon­ey flow to? Burlin O’Con­nell not­ed that 35% of the fund­ing went to­ward Se­ries B rounds, and the IPO mar­ket — which was hot not just in Mass­a­chu­setts but all around the coun­try — helped boost funds even more.

Mass­Bio re­port­ed that there were 21 area com­pa­nies that jumped to Nas­daq in 2020, rep­re­sent­ing 32% of all US-based bio­phar­ma IPOs. In to­tal, those com­pa­nies raised about $3.9 bil­lion, more than qua­dru­pling the $910 mil­lion com­bined IPO raise from 2019.

Mass­a­chu­setts’ biggest IPO win­ners were Re­lay with $460 mil­lion, For­ma with $319 mil­lion and Atea with $300 mil­lion, Mass­Bio said, while the av­er­age Mass­a­chu­setts IPO raise clocked in at $181 mil­lion.

And as with every oth­er in­dus­try, SPACs got in on the Mass­a­chu­setts bio­phar­ma game as well. Though there were on­ly four bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies to go pub­lic through a SPAC, Mass­Bio said, two of those were based in Mass­a­chu­setts: Cerev­el and Gem­i­ni. The biotechs raised $440 mil­lion and $216 mil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly, through the blank check com­pa­nies.

In terms of VC fi­nanc­ing rounds, Mass­a­chu­setts bio­phar­ma saw 15 rais­es of at least $100 mil­lion, with Atea lead­ing the way here. Their $215 mil­lion Se­ries D was the largest of any area biotech.

Look­ing ahead to 2021, Burlin O’Con­nell says the Mass­a­chu­setts sec­tor is car­ry­ing over its mo­men­tum in­to the new year.

“We’re off to an in­cred­i­bly strong year,” she said. “It’s im­per­a­tive that bio­phar­ma con­tin­ue to get sup­port they need through in­vestor con­fi­dence and pub­lic poli­cies.”

Kendalle Burlin O’Con­nell, Mass­Bio via YouTube

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There’s another unicorn in biotech land, as Benchling and its leading R&D cloud platform pull in a $200 million Series E to help scientists accelerate drug development. In doing so, the company hit a lofty $4 billion valuation — nearly five times what it was worth around this time last year, according to Forbes.

Despite the fact that drug development is becoming significantly more complex, the industry continues to run on paper, emails and spreadsheets, co-founder and CEO Sajith Wickramasekara said in a video on Benchling’s website. The MIT grad sought to change that by creating software that allows scientists to better track, model and forecast their work.

Novavax has had a busy month, filled with supply chain issues and manufacturing deals that have affected the rollout of its Covid-19 vaccine. Tuesday, the company announced updates to its leadership team.

CFO Greg Covino will step down from that role after just five months for personal reasons, the release said, but take on a new role as executive advisor. John Trizzino, current chief commercial officer and chief business officer, will take the CFO role over in the interim.

Amylyx is one of several companies looking to break through in the tough ALS field, and Wednesday they announced they’re moving forward with regulatory plans.

The Cambridge, MA-based biotech said they’re submitting a marketing application to the EMA for their AMX0035 program by the end of 2021. Wednesday’s news comes a few weeks after they revealed similar plans to move forward with Canadian health regulators by June 30.

The FDA and CDC have jointly decided to stop administering J&J’s Covid-19 vaccine after reviewing data involving six reported US cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot in individuals after receiving the vaccine.

CDC will convene a meeting of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Wednesday to further review these cases and assess their potential significance. “FDA will review that analysis as it also investigates these cases. Until that process is complete, we are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, said in a joint statement Tuesday morning.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday upheld the Federal Trade Commission’s ruling that generic drugmaker Impax Laboratories should be charged with antitrust violations for accepting payments worth about $100 million to delay the entry of a generic opioid for more than two years.

The court’s opinion upheld the FTC’s anticompetitive findings on the deal between Impax (now owned by Amneal Pharmaceuticals) and Endo Pharmaceuticals, under which Endo committed to not market an authorized generic, which increased Impax’s projected profits by $24.5 million. Endo agreed to pay Impax credits for the shrunken market that Impax would inherit if, as expected, Endo made a successful hop to a reformulated Opana ER.