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

The German billionaires behind BioNTech have found a new vaccine project to back.

Through their family office Athos Service, twin brothers Thomas and Andreas Strüngmann are leading a $25 million private placement into Switzerland’s AC Immune — which concurrently announced that it’s shelling out $58.7 million worth of stock to acquire Affiris’ portfolio of therapies targeting alpha-synuclein, including a vaccine candidate, for Parkinson’s disease.

Editor’s note: Interested in following biopharma’s fast-paced IPO market? You can bookmark our IPO Tracker here.

In a week that’s expected to see several biotechs price their IPOs, Candel Therapeutics got things kicked off Tuesday with a muted opener.

The company helmed by former GlaxoSmithKline vet Paul Peter Tak made its way to Nasdaq thanks to a $72 million raise, which was downsized by about 15% than originally anticipated, according to Renaissance Capital. Candel priced at $8 per share after initially seeking to launch in the $13 to $15 range.

As public and private companies stare down the reality of the Delta variant, many are now requiring that their employees or students be vaccinated against Covid-19 prior to attending school or to returning or starting a new job. Claims that such mandates are illegal or cannot be used for vaccines under emergency use authorizations have now been dismissed.

Setting the record straight, the Department of Justice on Monday called the mandates legal in a new memo, even when used for people with vaccines that remain subject to EUAs.

Lumira Ventures closed its largest fund on Monday, raking in $220 million to pump into the life sciences — but instead of targeting biotech hubs like San Francisco and Boston, the company is rolling the dice on “underserved geographies” in the US and Canada.

“We find oftentimes companies located in places like Montreal, or Fort Lauderdale, FL, or Kansas City or Phoenix, AZ just have more capital efficiency and better valuations, without having to compromise anything at all in the quality of the innovation and the management talent,” co-founder and managing partner Gerry Brunk told Endpoints News.