It’s just an­oth­er day in the 2020 biotech IPO boom. Three went pub­lic this morn­ing and a fourth gained 75 per­cent on its Nas­daq trad­ing de­but.

Lead­ing the pack is the bi­o­log­i­cal an­a­lyt­ics-fo­cused com­pa­ny Berke­ley Lights, which priced at $22 per share and raised $178.2 mil­lion. Next up is ALX On­col­o­gy, which at $19 per share raised $161.5 mil­lion. Then comes T-cell biotech Pan­dion, re­vis­ing pre­vi­ous num­bers to $18 per share and of­fer­ing an up­sized 2 mil­lion more shares, rais­ing $135 mil­lion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Soft­bank Group-backed Re­lay Ther­a­peu­tics opened on Thurs­day and leapt from its ini­tial $20 IPO price to more than $35 at mar­ket close.

Pan­dion hit the high end of their range, while ALX and Berke­ley Lights both priced above the range.

2020 has al­ready been a ‘his­toric’ year for biotech IPOs, with 13 com­pa­nies hav­ing raised over $200 mil­lion be­fore Au­gust. On­ly two reached that mark in 2019, and sev­en passed the thresh­old in 2018.

So far this year, 38 biotechs have filed for an IPO com­pared with 26 at this point last year, ac­cord­ing to Brad Lon­car.

There had been hints of an ex­cit­ing year brew­ing all the way back in Jan­u­ary. Things slowed down fol­low­ing the ex­treme mar­ket volatil­i­ty caused by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic in March. But the rel­a­tive­ly small biotech Zen­tal­is raised $165 mil­lion at the be­gin­ning of April, ig­nit­ing a new surge of IPO fundrais­ing in the sec­tor.

SPACs, or spe­cial pur­pose ac­qui­si­tion com­pa­nies, are al­so get­ting in on the ac­tion. As Nas­daq head of cap­i­tal mar­kets Jay Heller told End­points News ear­li­er this week, SPACs now make up al­most 35 per­cent of all new list­ings af­ter com­pris­ing just three per­cent of the IPO mar­ket in 2014.

Though Berke­ley Lights doesn’t pro­duce any drugs, they have de­vel­oped a “dig­i­tal cell bi­ol­o­gy” plat­form that can an­a­lyze liv­ing cells in a mul­ti­tude of ways and use this in­for­ma­tion to de­liv­er live bi­ol­o­gy to their cus­tomers. In the­o­ry, this can help ac­cel­er­ate drug de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion and they part­nered with Sanofi and Pfiz­er on an­ti­body dis­cov­ery.

ALX On­col­o­gy has al­ready had a suc­cess­ful fundrais­ing year, haul­ing in $105 mil­lion in Feb­ru­ary to fund a range of mid-stage stud­ies on its on­ly pipeline can­di­date — an an­ti­body tar­get­ing CD47. Some in the in­dus­try have seen promise in this area, as Gilead bought the biotech Forty Sev­en for near­ly $5 bil­lion in Jan­u­ary. ALX’s can­di­date hopes to re­duce tox­i­c­i­ty by not at­tract­ing macrophages.

Pan­dion signed a part­ner­ship with Astel­las last year for up to $800 mil­lion to de­vel­op an­ti­body treat­ments for au­toim­mune dis­or­ders. The com­pa­ny al­so earned $85 mil­lion from a Se­ries B round back in April. Its lead can­di­date PT101, which aims to boost im­mune re­spons­es by ex­pand­ing T cell pop­u­la­tions, is cur­rent­ly in a Phase Ia clin­i­cal tri­al.

The sharp in­crease in Re­lay Ther­a­peu­tics’ ear­ly trad­ing could al­low Soft­back’s Vi­sion Fund to sell their stake at a huge prof­it. In 2018 the group in­vest­ed $300 mil­lion in the biotech for 32 per­cent of the com­pa­ny, a sum that is now val­ued at about $1 bil­lion. The Vi­sion Fund al­so in­vest­ed ear­ly in Uber and Slack, but Re­lay is on­ly the ninth of its 88 in­vest­ments to go pub­lic. In the 12 month pe­ri­od end­ing last March, the Vi­sion fund post­ed an in­vest­ment loss of $17 bil­lion.

Digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics announced on Thursday that it’s cutting 35% of its staff as it awaits FDA clearance for its first product.

The company, which launched eight years ago, is one of a growing group of companies seeking a digital alternative to traditional medicine. The space saw a record $7.5 billion in investments in 2021, according to Chris Dokomajilar at DealForma, with uses spanning ADHD, PTSD and other indications. However, private insurers have been slow to hop on board.

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.