There was a time af­ter the 2008 crash that biotech IPOs were about as pop­u­lar as snow in March. But from 2013 through 2015 gen­er­al­ist in­vestors got over their fears and jumped in­to one of the hottest stock games on the plan­et. Funds chased each oth­er for huge re­turns. CEOs be­came overnight mil­lion­aires.

Now the mar­ket pen­du­lum has swung back as the bears pushed aside the bulls. But that doesn’t mean that the new ice age has be­gun, ei­ther.

With H1 com­ing to an end to­mor­row, Nas­daq has count­ed 14 biotech IPOs that col­lec­tive­ly raked in $878 mil­lion, a much re­duced fig­ure from the $4 bil­lion raised in 2015 from 42 biotech IPOs they tracked. And it was lit­tle com­pared to the 61 IPOs that raised $4.3 bil­lion dur­ing the go-go days of 2014.

That’s not too sur­pris­ing, giv­en the gale force winds that have been howl­ing in the biotech sec­tor over the last 6 months. A lot of good com­pa­nies have seen their stock prices fall by half. A hint of bad news now can evis­cer­ate stocks in sec­onds, and there are a host of com­pa­nies that are close to or in pen­ny stock ter­ri­to­ry.

What still draws a crowd on Wall Street? Cer­tain­ly gene edit­ing. If you look over the list of H1 IPOs Nas­daq of­fer­ered me, you’ll see that Ed­i­tas and In­tel­lia scored in the top ranks of new IPOs. That’s why CRISPR Ther­a­peu­tics has been set­ting the stage for an S-1 that’s al­most cer­tain­ly go­ing to shoot for the stars.

Chi­na’s BeiGene got the ball rolling with the biggest of­fer­ing of the year. But with more and more biotechs hang­ing back to wait for a sun­nier in­vest­ment cli­mate, it’s not un­usu­al to see plen­ty of dis­counts on share prices.

There are a cou­ple of biotech IPOs in the queue this week, Sy­ros Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and Gem­phire Ther­a­peu­tics, which are to­geth­er hunt­ing about $100 mil­lion more.

The mu­sic hasn’t died in biotech, but it’s not near­ly as loud and ur­gent as the hit tunes from 2013-2015. — John Car­roll, fol­low me @John­Cendpts

H1 2016 IPOs

2015 IPOs

2014 IPOs

When Regeneron scored an early approval for lipid lowering antibody Evkeeza back in February, the drugmaker cracked open a new pathway to lower abnormally high cholesterol levels. Now, Regeneron is chasing high triglycerides as well with some promising mid-stage data — but will genetic restrictions limit the drug’s use?

Regeneron’s Evkeeza (evinacumab) cut median triglyceride levels by more than 800 mg/dL (57%) in patients with a rare disorder causing abnormally high triglyceride levels compared with an overall increase of 50 mg/dL (1.8%) in participants on placebo, according to Phase II data presented Sunday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.

AstraZeneca hasn’t seen many setbacks in recent months for SGLT2 inhibitor Farxiga, which broke ground in heart failure and kidney disease regardless of diabetes diagnosis. But the British drugmaker had to admit defeat in taking Farxiga into Covid-19, but follow-up results add a bit of a silver lining to that trial’s safety data.

Of hospitalized Covid-19 patients dosed with AstraZeneca’s Farxiga, 11.2% experienced an organ failure or died after 30 days of therapy compared with 13.8% of those given placebo, according to follow-up data from the DARE-19 study revealed Sunday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.

Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb’s non-warfarin blood thinner Eliquis has raced out to become the most prescribed drug of its class on the market — even overtaking warfarin’s long-time lead. But in tricky-to-treat patients after a valve replacement, an investigator-sponsored study couldn’t turn up benefit and raised a troubling safety signal.

Eliquis failed to show benefit over standard of care in preventing serious clinical outcomes after a transaortic valve replacement (TAVR) and was linked to an “unexplained signal” in a subset of populations with a higher rate of non-CV deaths who did not need blood thinners apart from the surgery, according to data presented Saturday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.

If Novartis learned one thing from its interaction with the FDA over its latest heart failure approval for Entresto, it was that missing a primary endpoint may not be the nail in the coffin. Now, Entresto has missed again on a late-stage study in high-risk heart patients, and it’s already sowing the seeds for a path forward regardless.

Novartis’ Entresto couldn’t best standard-of-care ramipril in staving off a composite of deaths and heart failure events in patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction and/or pulmonary congestion who have had a prior heart attack, according to topline data from the Phase III PARADISE-MI study revealed Saturday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.