The high-roller club in bio­phar­ma: Who’s pay­ing top-dol­lar for up­fronts? And who are the busiest play­ers at the deal ta­ble?

Noth­ing says “I love this” in bio­phar­ma quite like a big up­front deal pay­ment.

In an era when biobucks are hand­ed around in a some­what care­free fash­ion, it’s the cash down pay­ments that tell you where the lead­ers in this in­dus­try are see­ing the next big ad­vances com­ing from.

We asked Chris Doko­ma­ji­lar, who launched Deal­For­ma, to crunch the num­bers for us on up­fronts and deal to­tals for the in­dus­try dat­ing back to the start of 2017, and a few things stand out in the re­sults.

First and fore­most, deal­mak­ing in an era of sky-high biotech val­u­a­tions means go­ing in big when you be­lieve there’s a game chang­ing new leap in phar­ma tech on the ta­ble. That’s what Mer­ck and Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb proved, along with the rest of the top 5, where to­tals leaned heav­i­ly on a sin­gle trans­ac­tion.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER