Healthcare analytics, AI solutions for biological big data, providing an AI platform for the biotech, life sciences, medical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as for related technological approaches, i.e., curation and text analysis with machine learning and other activities related to AI applications to these industries.
we need to turn these immuno-cold tumors into immuno ‘hot’ tumors so immunotherapy will be effective and recognize them
however each immunotherapies have their own toxicities
immunocheck points inhibitors: 50% of patients get very rough adverse events and have to stop therapy and give immunosuppressives
60 yo female with urothelial carcinoma with chemo induced rash given pembrolizumab but got worse rash… had Steven Johnson Syndrome… fatal outcome from one cycle of PD-L1 inhibitor
so now we are giving these immune checkpoints earlier before even surgery… the overall survival better but there are certain personalized toxicities
up to 35% patients with cancer have chronic immuno related adverse events and dose limiting toxicities
50% have low grade multiple toxicities (and they treat these AEs with steroids)
we have no biomarkers for these PD/PDL1 inhibitor adverse events
2:10-2:30
Implementing Molecular Profiling in Early Phase Clinical Trials: Precision from Bench to Bedside
power of biomarkers: BRCA2 null women with ovarian cancer success with olaparib even though at time was not approved except the biomarker known
every week they discuss with internal tumor board and consult with Foundation Medicine; however a mutational panel is great but need to understand the underlying effect on tumor biology
there are a handful of tumor agnostic targeted agents: based on biomarkers
she thinks digital twins will be helpful in determining cohort selection for clinical trails
she would like multiomics to be performed on every patient but how would this be done, especially in the ecosystem of the USA
from attendee question to speaker panel (from Indai): they have been running tmolecular boards but problem is when new targets or fusion proteins become known without a priori knowledge of them and no combination know what to do?
Eric Heil, MBA, Managing Partner, Medical Excellence Capital
started a venture fund and then a 501(c) to give small grants
in venture philanthropy it is not traditional grant writing but more of a personal relationship; he says find other companies they have backed and ask them
all about networking
looked at 1400 deals but only invested in 13
back years ago his company biotech got ten million after 2009 from TAP but now it seems smaller bridge money
John Lehr, President & CEO, Parkinson’s Foundation
runs venture philanthropy which is more like a mix of venture fund and granting agency
most run a for profit venture but mix model with 501c to fund small grants
Dr. Blaine Robinson, PhD, Vice President of the Therapy Acceleration Program (TAP), Blood Cancer United
runs Blood Cancer United that offers grants for blood based research
they run three pillars: venture biotech funding, clinical trial funding, and academic research but most they take equity in biotechs
so venture philanthropy is more of equity investing and using those funds to fund younger companies like bridge between first round and series C
Blood Cancer United looking for million and above investment “first in class’; was early with Kite and UPenn (where are they now… are they still with them?)
lung cancer has seemed to be ahead with respect to biomarkers and precision therapies
at least with NCCN guidelines they are up to 14 therapeutic biomarkers not diagnostic biomarkers so very ahead on the clinical decision making on actionable mutations for lung cancer
so most of the testing is genomic mutational spectrum for oncogenic drivers
there are three protein based biomarkers: Met, PDL1,
FISH is still used for some fusions
NGS is more sensitive test but takes 2-4 weeks
the number of detected EGFR variants are increasing so it is affecting the drug specificity
recently NRG1 fusions have been approved as a heregulin HER3 biomarker;
15% which were detected as negative for fusions the patients actually responded because fusions were hard to detect; many false positives
76% did not meet MET eligbility but only 13% were high enough for MET marker but was enough for FDA approval
some drugs beneficial for mutated version and some good for over expressed like MET or HER2 but where the mutation or exon skipping is important for therapy choice
we need better biobanking because we need more tissue; we loose more tissue during sectioning and not splitting blocks into two (one for diagnostic one for therapeutic)
liquid biopsy will find some mutations but other ones not very sensitivity in liquid biopsy like MET mutations (mutations may be assay specific)
some muts in bone marrow may just be in aging progenitor cells and sometimes in oncogene like BRAF but not cancer but dlonal homatopoesis (increased risk for myeloproliferative diseases but not solid tumors like melanoma)
clonal homatopoesis actually common so watch out when just relying on liquid biopsy
China is Making Large Inroads into Biotech: Is Investment Money Following? Is US Investment Money Following the China Biotech Boom?
Curator:Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.
A common route for raising capital or exit strategy for many US biotechs has been strategic transfer or sale of intellectual property (IP) or strategic partnership with large pharmaceutical companies looking to acquire new biotechnologies or expand their own pipelines. Most US based biotechs had enjoyed a favorable (although not fully exclusive) deal-making environment with US pharmaceutical companies with some competition from international biotech companies. US government agencies such as FINRA, CFIUS, and the SEC closely monitored such international deals and the regulatory environment for such international deal making in the biotechnology space was tight.
Smaller Chinese biotechs have operated in the United States (at various biotech hubs around the country) and have usually set up as either service entities to the biotech industry as contract research organizations (Wuxi AppTech), developing research reagents for biotech (Sino Biological) or conducting research for purposes of transferring IP to a parent company in China. Most likely Chinese biotechs set up research operations because of the overabundance of biotech hubs in the United States, with a dearth of these innovation hubs in the China mainland.
However, as highlighted in the Next in Health Podcast Series from PriceWaterHouseCoopers (PwC), China has been rapidly been developing innovation hubs as well as biotech hubs. And Chinese biotech companies are staying home in mainly China and exporting their IP to major US pharmaceutical companies. As PwC notes this deal making between Chinese biotech in China and US pharmaceutical companies have rapidly expanded recently.
The following are notes from PriceWaterHouseCoopers (PwC) podcast entitled: Strategic Shifts: Navigating China’s Biotech Boom and Its Impact on US Pharma:
Tune in as Glenn Hunzinger, PwC’s Health Industries Leader and Roel van den Akker, PwC’s Pharma and Life Sciences Deals Leader discuss the rapid rise of China’s biotech industry and what it means for U.S. pharmaceutical companies. They discuss the evolving role of Chinese biotech in the global innovation landscape and share perspectives on how U.S. pharmaceutical companies can thoughtfully assess opportunities, manage cross-border complexities, and build effective partnering and diligence strategies.
Discussion highlights:
China’s biotech industry is growing fast and becoming a global player, with U.S. companies increasingly looking to partner with Chinese firms on cutting-edge science
U.S. pharma leaders are encouraged to move beyond skepticism and stay curious by building relationships, learning from local innovation, and exploring new partnership opportunities
Successfully partnering with Chinese biotech firms requires a careful and well-structured approach that accounts for global complexity, protects data and IP, and uses creative deal structures like new company formations to manage risk and stay flexible
U.S. companies need to be proactive in order to stay competitive by actively exploring global innovation, understanding the risks, and having a clear strategy to bring high-potential science to U.S. patients
In 2019 there were zero in licensing deals from China to US pharma…. Today one in five come from China.
China evolved into a expanding economy because China invested in biotech companies
Lots of skilled people
Built centers that rivaled biotech innovation centers in places like Boston, California Bay Area, and Philadelphia
China has gone from low cost manufacturing country to an innovative economy with great science coming out of it. US pharma boardrooms need to understand this
The analysts at PWC suggest to look at Data integrity, IP protection and risks before bringing China biotech IP in US. It is imperative that companies do ample due diligence.
China’s rise as a biotech innovation hub: 4 key strategic questions for US biopharma executives
May 08, 2025
Roel van den Akker; Partner, Pharmaceutical & Life Science Deals Leader, PwC
China’s biotech sector is evolving at breakneck speed — and the implications for US pharma are too significant to ignore. Over the past five years, China has transitioned from being a nice to watch market to a central pillar of global biopharma innovation. Today, one-third of in-licensed molecules at US pharma multinationals originate from China, up from virtually zero in 2019.
China’s biotech sector, however, is not monolithic or uniform. The ecosystem spans high-quality, globally competitive biotech hubs in cities like Hangzhou and Suzhou — home to companies producing first-in-class and novel innovations in ophthalmology, cardiovascular, and immunology — as well as a long tail of undercapitalized players where execution and capability gaps remain profound.
And now, Washington is paying attention, too. A recent report from the US National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) highlighted China’s ambitions to dominate biotech as a “strategic priority” with dual-use implications across health and security. The report urges the US government and private sector to reassess dependencies and increase scrutiny of biotechnology partnerships abroad. For the US biopharma industry, this isn’t just a supply chain concern — it is a boardroom issue.
With the licensing market still skewed toward buyers, venture funding remaining depressed in China and IPO windows in Hong Kong slowly reopening, there is a compelling window for US companies to secure differentiated assets at relatively attractive terms. Speedy deal execution is increasingly important as the highest quality assets are being quickly scooped up. But navigating this terrain can require more than opportunism. It calls for deliberate strategy, structured governance and a nuanced geopolitical risk framework.
Here are four questions every US biopharma executive should be asking:
1. What is our posture toward preclinical and clinical science from China?
Are we approaching Chinese innovation with a default posture of skepticism or strategic curiosity? Many top-tier Chinese biotechs are now generating US-caliber data at the speed of light, particularly in therapeutic modalities such as mAbs, ADCs and T-cell engagers, but plenty still have execution gaps. Those that elect to lean in will likely need a deliberate eco-system approach geared towards being the partner of choice and local brand building.
2. What does our China diligence playbook look like?
In light of national security concerns, companies need a China-specific diligence framework — one that goes beyond the science. This includes scrutiny around data integrity, IP protection, export controls, and cross border data sharing.
3. What is our plan post-licensing or acquisition?
Ownership is just the start. US companies need a clear strategy for globalizing China-origin assets — from IND transfers to FDA filing to commercial launch. In some cases, that may require reworking the preclinical package or rebuilding the CMC infrastructure entirely. Increasingly, US (or Europe)-based “Newcos” may serve as geopolitical firewalls.
4. How can we preserve agility amid regulatory and political volatility?
With rising US-China tensions and new export control proposals under review, companies must future-proof deal structures. This could include regional carveouts, US-only development rights, or milestone-gated commitments. The NSCEB report makes clear: passive engagement is no longer tenable.
Innovation strategy meets national interest
The trendlines are clear: China is not just a manufacturing hub — it is an increasingly important source of global biotech innovation. But sourcing innovation from China now sits at the intersection of science, strategy and security. US pharma and biopharma companies can no longer afford to treat China engagement as tactical. Those who adopt a deliberate, resilient and agile China strategy — grounded in scientific rigor and geopolitical realism — likely lead in tomorrow’s innovation race.
A researcher prepares medicine at a laboratory in Nanjing University in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, April 29, 2011. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
U.S. drugmakers turn to Chinese companies as they face patent expirations
Licensing deals accelerate while traditional mergers decline
Chinese biotechs are challenging Western peers, analysts say
June 16 (Reuters) – U.S. drugmakers are licensing molecules from China for potential new medicines at an accelerating pace, according to new data, betting they can turn upfront payments of as little as $80 million into multibillion-dollar treatments.
Through June, U.S. drugmakers have signed 14 deals potentially worth $18.3 billion to license drugs from China-based companies. That compares with just two such deals in the year-earlier period, according to data from GlobalData provided exclusively to Reuters.
How to stop the shift of drug discovery from the U.S. to China. The FDA must make it easier to do such work in the U.S.
Scott GottliebMay 6, 2025
Five years ago, U.S. pharmaceutical companies didn’t license any new drugs from China. By 2024, one-third of their new compounds were coming from Chinese biotechnology firms.
Why are U.S. drugmakers sending their business to China? As in many other industries, it’s so much cheaper to synthesize new compounds inside Chinese biotechnology firms once a novel biological target has been discovered in American laboratories.
Yet the costs of developing new drugs in the U.S. needn’t be so high. They are driven up, in part, by increasing regulatory requirements that burden early-stage drug discovery in America. That’s especially true for Phase I clinical trials, in which drugs are tested in people for the first time.
Newsletter
The smartest thinkers in life sciences on what’s happening — and what’s to come
This shift of discovery work to China is going to accelerate if we don’t take deliberate steps to make it easier to do such work here in America. Yet the imperative to modernize early-stage drug development — to ensure that groundbreaking drug discovery remains in the U.S. rather than migrating to China — is colliding head-on with an impulse to slash the very government workforce capable of spearheading these reforms. These conflicting impulses have created a paradoxical tension: on one hand, the desire to stay competitive with China in biotechnology innovation, and on the other, a parallel campaign to reduce and in some cases dismantle the investments and institutions essential to achieving that goal.
In most cases, Chinese firms are not discovering new biological targets, nor are they crafting genuinely novel compounds to engage these targets through homegrown Chinese research. Instead, they piggyback on Western innovations by scouring U.S. patents, zeroing in on biological targets that are initially uncovered in American labs, and then developing “me too” drugs that replicate American-made compounds with only superficial tweaks, or producing “fast follower” drugs that capitalize on the original breakthroughs while refining key features to try to surpass U.S. innovation. Facing fewer regulations, the Chinese drugmakers can move more quickly than U.S. biotechnology companies — synthesizing copy-cat drugs based on our biological advances and then promptly moving these Chinese-made compounds into early-stage clinical trials, outpacing their American counterparts.
According to the investment bank Jefferies, large American drug companies spent more than $4.2 billion over the past year licensing or acquiring new compounds originally synthesized by Chinese firms. Many comprised advanced compounds such as antibody drugs and cell therapies — underscoring Chinese companies’ growing sophistication in adopting the latest American technologies. The cost of licensing these compounds from China, rather than synthesizing them in American labs, can be significantly lower. At a time when research funding in the U.S. is being cut, and research budgets are becoming painfully stretched, companies are looking to lower the cost of building their pipelines. In a fast-moving field such as oncology, this shift toward Chinese-synthesized compounds is particularly striking: I am told by someone inside the FDA process that nearly three-quarters of new small molecule cancer drugs submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to begin U.S.-based clinical trials are initially made in China.
Usually, only a few months elapse between the moment a U.S. research team publishes a patent identifying a new biological target and when a biotechnology firm in China creates the corresponding drug that capitalizes on these findings. Because Chinese firms can synthesize new molecules at a fraction of the cost incurred by U.S. biotechnology companies — owing to a large and skilled but much cheaper workforce — they find the most intriguing biological targets pursued by Western researchers, rapidly churning out potent yet less expensive copycat molecules that they then market to Western companies.
A major challenge for U.S. firms is the long and costly process of obtaining FDA approval for Phase I studies, in which drugmakers test a new drug’s safety and tolerability in a small group of human volunteers. In China, launching this initial phase of clinical trials is far simpler, giving Chinese biotechnology companies a competitive advantage: By swiftly advancing their molecules into early-stage patient testing, Chinese firms can more readily determine which compounds hit their biological targets and show the greatest therapeutic promise. This allows the Chinese firms to quickly refine their molecules and then leapfrog their American counterparts, who are slowed by more cautious regulatory processes. While China’s regulatory process doesn’t uphold the patient safeguards that Americans rightly insist upon, the U.S. FDA could still streamline its path into early-stage drug development, bolstering America’s competitive edge without compromising patient safety.
In the U.S., one of the costliest early hurdles is the exhaustive animal testing that the FDA requires before a drug can be advanced into Phase I studies. These “pre-clinical” studies help safeguard patients, but the agency also uses this testing to weed out potential failures before a drug requires more intensive FDA scrutiny in later trials.
Over time, this regulatory framework has frontloaded a significant share of costs to the earliest phases of drug development, when biotechnology startups are often running on shoestring budgets, lack clinical data to attract investors, and can least afford delays. One measure of the increasing difficulty in securing the FDA’s permission for Phase I trials is the growing number of U.S. drugmakers who take compounds discovered on American soil and conduct these clinical trials in other Western markets, where they can obtain data more quickly and inexpensively before bringing it back to the FDA. One popular locale is Australia, where costs run about 60% lower than U.S.-based clinical trials, largely because the Australian government offers tax incentives to attract this kind of biomedical investment.
Many animal studies address esoteric questions about a drug’s long-term effects on parameters that may not be relevant to its eventual use — for example, at doses and durations of use that may be far beyond how patients will ultimately use the drug. The FDA’s preclinical testing protocols sometimes require American researchers to administer new compounds to animals at levels up to 500 times higher than any intended dose for patients, aiming for maximum animal exposure before human trials can begin. Where the FDA needs to screen for certain remote risks, many animal studies could be safely deferred until human trials confirm that a drug may benefit patients. At that point, it becomes easier for biotechnology companies to raise capital to fund these pro forma testing efforts.
To modernize the process, the FDA could tap into the wealth of data from existing drugs to establish a more phased approach to these requirements, where the amount of initial animal testing is more closely matched to a drug’s novelty and a better estimation of its perceived risks. It’s a prime opportunity to employ artificial intelligence — mining current data and extrapolating known information to newly discovered molecules. For new molecules that share structural similarities with established drugs, where a robust body of safety information already exists (and the likelihood of uncovering novel risks is judged to be minimal), some animal studies might simply be unnecessary. To establish a graduated approach to the scope of pre-clinical toxicology studies that the FDA requires for new molecules, Congress could revise the agency’s statutory framework, explicitly empowering it to adopt such flexible standards. It would also require targeted investments, enabling the FDA to craft the necessary tools and protocols to implement these refined methodologies.
Mice and even primates are often poor proxies for many of the remote toxicities the FDA is trying to test for, anyway. The agency can also make a more concerted effort to adopt advanced technologies, like pieces of human organs embedded in chips that can be used to test for remote dangers a drug may pose to specific organs like the heart and liver. These tools can reliably screen for risks at a fraction of the time and cost. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary recently announced his intention to pursue a plan that would phase out animal studies in the preclinical evaluation of antibody drugs, shifting instead toward innovative technologies that assess toxicology without relying on live animals. This positive step requires the FDA to invest in new capabilities, and scientific staff that possess expertise in these novel domains.
But right now, that investment seems unlikely. The size and scientific scope of the FDA staff responsible for reviewing early-stage drug development — and evaluating data collected from animal studies — has failed to keep up with the increasing complexity and sheer volume of applications flooding into the agency to launch Phase I clinical trials. Now, the FDA has made deep staffing cuts, prompted by DOGE, that have specifically targeted scientific teams that would lead these essential reforms.
Adding to these woes, morale at the FDA has declined so markedly that many foresee a wave of voluntary resignations among clinical reviewers. By thinning the ranks of experts who tackle novel scientific questions and resolve issues that span across different drug development programs — especially the elimination of the policy office within the FDA’s Office of New Drugs, which adjudicated these kinds of cross-cutting scientific questions — the government has impeded the early dialogue with drug developers that often results in streamlining requirements for Phase I studies. Even more challenging, it weakens the staff’s ability to develop new guidance documents and put better review practices into place — reforms essential for lasting improvements to the preclinical review process.
Instead of strengthening America’s biotechnology ecosystem, such measures risk accelerating the migration of discovery activities to China, undermining innovation at home. When U.S. drugmakers license compounds from China, they divert funds that might otherwise bolster innovation hubs such as Boston’s Kendall Square or North Carolina’s Research Triangle. The U.S. biotechnology industry was the world’s envy, but if we’re not careful, every drug could be made in China.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D., is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and served as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 2017 to 2019. He is a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates and serves on the boards of directors of Pfizer Inc. and Illumina.
From FierceBiotech: US Biotech Companies are finding that foreign investments may put them in a precarious position for government funding
The Department of Health and Human Services is allegedly denying clinical trial funding for biotechs based on their ties to certain foreign investors, Fierce Biotech has learned.
At the BIO conference in Boston this week, Fierce spoke with a biotech executive who had their grant pulled, as well as an industry thought leader who backed up the claims about a change in the HHS’ funding approach.
“We’re in a situation where some of the companies are confused about their ability to take foreign investment,” said John Stanford, founder and executive director of Incubate, a nonprofit organization of biotech venture capital firms and patient advocacy groups designed to educate policymakers on life science investment and innovation.
“We’ve been hearing about SBIR grants canceled,” Stanford told Fierce in a separate interview at BIO. “Anecdotally, we’ve also heard it’s a lot more than China and it’s countries—Canada, Norway, the EU—that traditionally we think of as allies.”
“Again, that’s anecdotal,” he stressed. “But we would be very concerned [about] the idea that we won’t take Canadian investments or Japanese investments or EU-based investments.”
“We want foreign investors coming to U.S.-based companies to develop drugs for the world,” Stanford said. “That is a win-win-win.”
Back in February, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum titled the “America First Investment Policy” that aims to restrict both inbound and outbound investments related to “foreign adversaries” in certain strategic industries. The document lacks specifics but puts China front and center while mentioning both healthcare and biotech among the sectors it will regulate.
And the investment analysis firm Jeffries noted that
Looking at financial data from FactSet, Jefferies analysts found biotech funding in May 2025 was down 57%, to just over $2.7 billion, compared to the same time last year. That sum was only slightly better than the nearly $2.6 billion raised in April — the worst haul in three years — and was also 44% lower than the average seen across the past 12 months.
Today, total capital remains relatively steady, but it’s flowing differently.
Fewer companies are commanding a greater share of investment, and a new global map of biotech leadership is emerging—one where Israel, Italy, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and NAME are not just participants but strategic innovators and investors in the space.
While some correction was inevitable after the pandemic’s urgency subsided, the sector’s foundation had already changed.
CROs didn’t scale down; they doubled down, offering sponsors the flexibility to develop therapies without taking on the full weight of manufacturing and trials in-house.
This shift underpinned a new era of capital efficiency and strategic outsourcing, which is strongly influenced by new smart technologies that generate code and content at a blink of an eye and refine research protocols.
Selective but Strong: The New Capital Math
After the surge of 2020–2021, a funding correction began in late 2022.
According to Jefferies, biotech funding in May 2025 was down 57 per cent year-over-year, dropping to roughly $2.7 billion.
Public markets also cooled. In 2023, biotech IPOs hit their lowest numbers in a decade, and follow-on offerings became increasingly rare.
This deceleration prompted talk of a “biotech winter.” Yet key indicators suggest a market in transition rather than decline. Private equity and venture capital remain active but are more selective.
While early-stage companies face greater hurdles, late-stage biotechs and those with de-risked clinical programs continue to attract significant funding.
Follow the Late-Stage Money
A recent GlobalData report underscores this trend: late-stage biotech companies now receive nearly double the capital of their earlier-stage counterparts.
Median venture rounds for Phase III companies have climbed to $62.5 million, as investors increasingly prioritise assets with regulatory clarity and near-term commercialisation potential.
The post-COVID period has revealed an important funding shift: fewer biotech companies are securing a larger percentage of available capital.
In an environment of macroeconomic uncertainty, geopolitical risk, and rising interest rates, investors are retreating from speculative bets and doubling down on known quantities.
From Gemini: Is US biotech investment going overseas in 2025? Plot in a bar graph the US biotech investment versus worldwide biotech investment by country
Is US biotech investment going overseas in 2025? Plot in a bar graph the US biotech investment versus worldwide biotech investment by country
Yes the US has many more venture capital firms focused on Biotech investment but it is appearing that investment is not staying in the US.
The global biotech funding landscape in 2023: U.S. leads while Europe and China make strides
In 2023, the U.S. continued to demonstrate its position as the biotech funding leader, commanding over one-third, 35%, of the global investment in the sector. Overall, U.S. biotech firms attracted $56.79 billion in funding, according to a survey of Crunchbase data. Next in line was China, which contributed about 12.7% to the global funding pool, or $20.61 billion. Up next was Europe, which secured more than $11.46 billion and representing more than 7% of the worldwide funding.
While U.S. leads in total biotech funding, Chinese biotech companies, on average, saw larger funding rounds than either Europe or the U.S. The average funding size per company in China was roughly three times larger than that in the U.S. and six times larger than the average in Europe.
But while China-based companies had larger hauls, they were comparatively few. Chinese biotech secured in cumulative $20.61 billion among just 69 firms, with roughly $299 million in funding per company on average. Meanwhile, the 229 European biotech firms that won funding in the past year attracted $11.46 billion in funding, averaging $50 million each. In comparison, the 583 U.S. biotech companies with recent funding attracted $56.79 billion, averaging $97 million per company.
The map below represents the total biotech funding amount in USD across the globe. Funding amounts are shaded based on companies’ cumulative funding totals and density. Darker shades indicate higher funding amounts and density, with the U.S. hubs on the East and West Coasts showing the darkest shade, reflecting the combination of total funding and density.
Size of the US Biotech Market is expected to grow from half a billion in 2023 to 1.7 trillion in 2033. Source novaoneadvisor.com
Biotech investment trends in the US for 2025 present a complex picture. While some reports indicate a general slowdown in venture funding for biotech startups and concerns about tariff impacts, other sources suggest resilience within the sector, with strong revenue growth for public biotech companies in both the US and Europe in 2024, expected to continue into 2025. Additionally, there are calls for significant investment within the US to maintain its leadership in biotechnology. Therefore, it is not definitively clear that US biotech investment is predominantly going overseas in 2025, but rather navigating a challenging and evolving landscape.
Regarding US biotech investment versus worldwide biotech investment by country, here is a bar graph of key biotech investment moves in 2025 based on available data. Please note that this data reflects “key moves” in biotech funding for 2025 as reported by Labiotech, and a comprehensive worldwide investment breakdown for all countries was not available.
From Franklin Templeton: China is Emerging as a Global Biotechnology Player
The combined value of China’s outside licensing deals reached around US$46 billion in 2024, up from US$38 billion in 2023 and US$28 billion in 2022, according to data provider NextPharma. Meanwhile, the number of global companies licensing into China has decreased across the same period. These tailwinds have helped China expand its share of global drug development to nearly 30% compared to 48% for the United States, according to data provider Citeline. Strong IP protection has positioned China to receive global investment, with a 2024 policy encouraging more IP collaboration between global and Chinese companies. US investment bank Stifel projects that molecules licensed by large pharmaceutical firms from China will increase to 37% in 2025. This shift has been largely driven by US companies seeking cheaper drug development alternatives and has led to R&D spending in China outpacing that of the United States.
A Closer Look at the Financials and Comparison between China and US Biotech Investment Trends
This rapid growth of Chinese biopharma was predictable back in 2018 as this article from an investment newsletter suggests:
November 10, 2022Posted by China BriefingWritten by Yi WuReading Time: 5 minutes
Biopharma, short for biopharmaceuticals, are medical products produced using biotechnology (or biotech). Typical biopharma products include pharmaceuticals generated from living organisms, vaccines, gene therapy, etc.
An important subsector of biotech, China’s biopharma industry has much attention home and abroad, especially after Chinese companies developed multiple COVID-19 vaccines now in wide circulation. Market capitalization of Chinese biopharma companies grew to over US$200 billion in 2020 from US$1 billion in 2016.
With China’s rapidly aging population and a growing affluent middle-class, the country’s biopharma industry presents challenging but compelling opportunities to investors.
In this article, we discuss the market size, growth drivers, and global competition facing China’s biopharma industry and suggest potential investment paths.
How big is China’s biopharma market?
Biopharmaceuticals in China is a lucrative business, with significant domestic demand due to an aging population and expanding household budgets for quality products and services as people’s living standards improve.
China’s healthcare market is predicted to expand from around US$900 billion (RMB 6.47 trillion) in 2019 to US$2.3 trillion (RMB 16.53 trillion) in 2030, and its market size is second to only the US. China’s total expenditure on healthcare as a component of its GDP increased to 5.35 percent in 2019 from 4.23 percent in 2010.
What are the growth drivers for China’s biopharma industry?
The broader biotech sector is a main focus of the Chinese government’s “Made in China 2025” strategy. The country needs a steady biopharmaceutical industry to address its healthcare needs and to build an internationally competitive and innovative pharmaceutical industry as part of wider economic restructuring. Under the same momentum, on January 30, 2022, nine agencies jointly issued the “14th Five-year Plan for the Development of the Pharmaceuticals Industry” as a guiding document that clarifies the goals and directions for China’s pharmaceutical industry development in the next five years.
Now let’s compare the size of the US biotech market: You can see the US biotech valuation is now similar to the estimated market capitalization of the China market.
The U.S. biotechnology market size was valued at USD 621.55 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 1,794.11 billion by 2033, registering a CAGR of 12.5% from 2024 to 2033. Ongoing government initiatives are the key factors driving the growth of the market. Also, improving approval processes coupled with the favorable reimbursement policies can fuel market growth further.
Key Takeaways:
DNA sequencing dominated this market and held the highest revenue market share of 18% in 2023
The others’ segment is anticipated to grow at the fastest CAGR of 28.1% during the forecast period.
The health segment dominated the market and accounted for the largest revenue market share of 44.13% in 2023.
Bioinformatics is expected to witness the fastest growth, with a CAGR of 17.2% during the forecast period.
The U.S. biotechnology market is witnessing major growth contributed by the increasing adoption and applications of biotechnology in many industries like pharmaceuticals, agriculture, food production, environmental conservation, and energy. In addition, market players in the industry are increasingly focusing on innovations across many fields such as energy, medicine, and materials science using biological processes to overcome challenges and fuel technological advancements. Also, in recent years there has been a notable surge in the utilization of biotechnological methods including DNA fingerprinting, stem cell technology, and genetic engineering propelling the market expansion soon.
‘The bar has risen’: China’s biotech gains push US companies to adapt
A fast-improving pipeline of drugs invented in China is attracting pharma dealmakers, putting pressure on U.S. biotechs and the VC firms that back them.
Soon after starting a new biotechnology company, David Li realized he needed to rethink his strategy.
Li had been conducting the competitive research biotech entrepreneurs typically undertake before soliciting investment. He drew up a list of drug targets that his startup, Meliora Therapeutics, could pursue and checked them against the potential competition.
Li quickly found that biotechs in China were already working on many of the targets he had on his list. Curious, he visited Shanghai and Suzhou and witnessed a buzzing scene of startups set frenetically to task.
“They’re not really thinking about the U.S. at all. They’re just trying to create more value and stay alive to differentiate themselves from the next guy in China,” he said. “They’re moving quick. There are a lot of them and they’re just quite competitive.”
Li’s experience is illustrative of a trend that could pressure biotech companies in the U.S. and alter their drug development strategies. More and more, large pharmaceutical companies are licensing experimental drugs from China. Venture companies are testing similar tactics by launching new U.S. startups around compounds sourced from China’s laboratories. This shift has been sudden, with licensing deals ramping rapidly over the past two years. And it is occurring even as the shadow of U.S.-China competition within biotech grows longer.
Executives and investors interviewed by BioPharma Dive at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference this week share Li’s outlook. They expect such deals will accelerate and, in the process, force U.S. biotechs to work harder to stand out.
“We’ve been warning people for a while, we’re losing our edge,” said Paul Hastings, CEO of cell therapy maker Nkarta and former chair of the U.S. lobbying group the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. “Innovation is now showing up on our doorstep.”
There’s perhaps no clearer example of this than ivonescimab, a drug developed by China-based Akeso Therapeutics and licensed by U.S.-based Summit Therapeutics. Recent results from a lung cancer study run in China showed ivonescimab outperformed Keytruda, Merck’s dominant immunotherapy and currently the pharmaceutical industry’s most lucrative single product.
The finding “put a huge focus on what’s happening in China,” said Boris Zaïtra, head of business development at Roche, which sells a rival to Keytruda.
Fast-moving research
Today’s deal boom has roots in efforts by the Chinese government to upgrade the country’s biotech capabilities by upping investment in technological innovation. In the life sciences, the initiative provided funding, discounted or even free laboratory space and grants to support what Li described as a “robust ecosystem” of biotechs.
The results are clear. Places like Shanghai and Suzhou are home to a skilled workforce of scientists and hundreds of homegrown companies that employ them. Science parks akin to the U.S. biotech hubs of Cambridge, Massachusetts and San Francisco have sprouted up.
Chinese companies generally can move faster, and at a lower cost, than their U.S. counterparts. Startups can go from launch to clinical trials in 18 months or less, compared to a few years in the U.S., Li estimated. Clinical trial enrollment is speedy, while staffing and supply chain costs are lower, helping companies move drugs along more cost effectively.
“If you’re a national company within China running a trial, just by virtue of the networks that you work within, you pay a fraction of what we pay, and the access to patients is enough that you can go really fast,” said Andy Plump, head of research at Takeda Pharmaceutical. “All of those are enablers.”
And what they’ve enabled is a large and growing stockpile of drug prospects, many of which are designed as “me too better” versions of existing medicines, analysts at the investment bank Jefferies wrote in a December report. Initially focused in oncology, China-based companies are now churning out high-quality compounds across multiple therapeutic areas, including autoimmune conditions and obesity.
“There was a huge boom of investment in China, cost of capital was very low, and all these companies blew out huge pipelines,” said Alexis Borisy, a biotech investor and founder of venture capital firm Curie.Bio. ”Anything that anybody was doing in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, you could probably find 10 to 50 versions of it across the China ecosystem.”
Me-toos become me-betters
For years now, Western biopharma executives have scouted the pipelines of China’s biotech laboratories — exploration that yielded a smattering of licensing deals and research collaborations. Borisy was among them, starting in 2020 a company called EQRx that sought to bring Chinese versions of already-approved drugs to the U.S. and sell them for less. EQRx’s plan backfired amid scrutiny by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of medicines tested only in people from a single country.
Now, however, the pace of deals has accelerated rapidly. There are a few reasons for this. According to Plump, one is the improving quality of the drug compounds being developed. The “me toos” are becoming “me betters” that could surpass available therapies and earn significant revenue for companies — like BeiGene’s blood cancer drug Brukinsa, which, in new prescriptions for the treatment of leukemia, overtook two established medicines of the same type last year.
Another reason, Plump said, is that China-based companies are becoming more innovative, studying drug targets that might not have yet yielded marketed medicines, or for which the most advanced competition is in early testing. Li notes how Chinese companies are going after harder “engineering problems,” like making complex, multifunctional antibody drugs, or antibody-drug conjugates.
“There are so many [companies] that the new assets are going to keep coming,” Li said.
Much as in the U.S., China-based biotechs are also fighting for funding, pushing them to consider licensing deals with multinational pharma companies. At the same time, these pharmas are hunting for cheap medicines they can plug into their pipelines ahead of looming patent cliffs. The two trends are “colliding,” said Kristina Burow, a managing director with Arch Venture Partners. “I don’t see an end to that.”
The statistics bear Burow’s view out. According to Jefferies, the number and average value of deals for China-developed drugs reached record levels last year. Another report, from Stifel’s Tim Opler, showed that pharma companies now source about one-third of their in-licensed molecules from China, up from around 10% to 12% between 2020 and 2022.
“I see huge opportunities for us to partner and work together with Chinese companies,” said Plump, of Takeda.
“There’s been a lot of really good, high quality molecules and data that have emerged from China over the last couple of years,” said Robert Plenge, the head of research at Bristol Myers Squibb. “It’s also no longer just simply repeating what’s been done with the exact same type of molecule.”
Geopolitical risks
These deals are happening against an uncertain backdrop. The U.S. Congress has spent the last year or so kicking around iterations of the Biosecure Act, a bill that would restrict U.S. biotechs from working with certain China-based drug contractors. A committee in the House of Representatives is calling for new limits on clinical trials that involve Chinese military hospitals. And the incoming Trump administration has threatened tariffs that could ripple across industrial sectors.
“We don’t know what this new administration is going to do,” said Jon Norris, a managing director at HSBC Innovation Banking.
The Biosecure Act “keeps going sideways,” added Hastings, who believes that any impact from the legislation, if passed, would be minimal. Instead, Hastings wonders if future tariffs may be more problematic. “There will be tariffs on other goods coming from China. Does that include raw materials and innovation? It’s hard to imagine that it won’t,” he said.
But executives and investors expect deals to continue, meaning U.S. biotechs will have to do more to compete.
“U.S. companies will need to figure out what it is they’re able to bring to the table that others can’t,” said Burow, of Arch.
Borisy said startups working on first-of-their-kind drugs need to be more secretive than ever. “Do not publish. Do not present at a scientific meeting. Do not put out a poster. Try to make your initial patent filing as obtuse as possible,” he cautioned.
“The second that paper comes out, or poster at any scientific meeting, or talk or patent, assume it has launched a thousand ships.”
Those that are further along should assume companies in China will be quick on their heels with potentially superior drugs. “The day when you could come out with a bad molecule and open up a field is over,” he said.
Greater competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing, according to Neil Kumar, CEO of BridgeBio Pharma. Drug development could become more efficient as pharmas acquire medicines from a “cheaper” starting point and advance them more quickly.
Venture dollars could be directed towards newer ideas, rather than standing up a host of similar companies.“If all of a sudden this makes us less ‘lemming-like,’” Kumar said, “I have no problem with that.”
Li similarly argues that, going forward, U.S. companies need to focus on “novelty and innovation.” At his own company, Li is now working on things “we felt others were not able to access.”
“The game has always been the same. Bring something super differentiated to market,” he said. But “the bar has risen.”
Gwendolyn Wu and Jacob Bell contributed reporting.
Is Chinese Biotechs just Producing Me-Too Drugs or are they Innovating New Molecular Entities?
The following articles explain the areas in which Chinese Biotech is expanding and focused on.
However the sort answer and summary to the aforementioned question is: Definately Chinese Biotechs are innovating at a rapid pace, and new molecular entities and new classes of drugs are outpacing any copycat or mee-too generic drug development.
This article by Joe Renny on LinkedIn focuses on the degree of innovation in Chinese biotech companies. I put the article in mostly its entirety because Joe did an excellent analysis of China’s biotech industry.
Joe Renny: Strategic Growth Leader | Driving M&A, Pharma Partnerships & Innovation | Unlocking the Commercial Potential of Science | Biotech & Pharmaceuticals
China’s biotech sector is in the midst of a stunning surge – its stocks have skyrocketed over 60% this year (outpacing even China’s high-flying tech sector), and the country now has over 1,250 innovative drugs in development, nearly catching up with the U.S. pipeline of ~1,440. Once known mainly for generic manufacturing, China is rapidly emerging as a source of differentiated innovation. Global pharma giants have taken notice: major licensing deals are proliferating as Western drugmakers snap up Chinese-born therapies in fields like oncology, metabolic diseases (obesity/diabetes), and immunology. The excitement is palpable – but a critical question looms beneath the optimism: Can this wave of innovation meaningfully improve the pharmaceutical industry’s return on investment (ROI)? In other words, will China’s biotech boom fix the underlying economics of drug development, or are the same old ROI challenges here to stay?
From Copycats to Cutting-Edge: China’s Rapid Ascent in Biotech
In the past decade, China’s pharma landscape has transformed from copycat chemistry to cutting-edge biotech. The sheer scale of innovation is unprecedented. A recent analysis found China had over 1,250 novel drug candidates enter development in 2024, far surpassing the EU and nearly reaching U.S. levels. This is a remarkable jump from just a few years ago – back in 2015, China contributed only ~160 compounds globally. Reforms to streamline drug approvals and massive R&D investments (spurred by initiatives like Made in China 2025) have unleashed a boom led by returnee scientists and ambitious startups.
Importantly, the quality of Chinese innovation has leapt upward alongside quantity. Drugs originating in China are increasingly clearing high bars of efficacy and safety. The world’s strictest regulators, including the U.S. FDA and European EMA, have begun fast-tracking more Chinese-developed drugs with priority reviews and “breakthrough” designations. For example, a cell therapy for blood cancer developed by China’s Legend Biotech won FDA approval (marketed by Johnson & Johnson) and is considered superior to a rival U.S. therapy. Another China-origin drug – Akeso Inc.’s novel cancer antibody that outperformed Merck’s Keytruda in trials – triggered a global wave of interest and a $500 million licensing deal in 2022. In short, China is no longer just a low-cost manufacturing base; it’s producing world-class treatments that Big Pharma is eager to get its hands on.
This trend is also evident in the stock markets. After a four-year slump, Chinese biotech stocks have roared back, becoming one of Asia’s best-performing sectors in 2025. The Hang Seng Biotech Index in Hong Kong is up over 60% since January, vastly outperforming broader tech indices. Investors are excited by signals that China is becoming a true global hub for biopharma innovation. According to one analyst, “China biotech is now a disruptive force reshaping global drug innovation… The science is real, the economics are compelling, and the pipeline is starting to deliver”. All of this represents a fundamental shift in the industry’s centre of gravity – and perhaps a new source of competitive pressure on Western incumbents.
Western Pharma’s Response: Licensing Deals and Partnerships Accelerate
Global pharmaceutical companies aren’t standing on the sidelines – they’re rushing to collaborate with and invest in Chinese biotechs. In fact, U.S. and European drugmakers have dramatically stepped up licensing deals to tap China’s innovations. Through the first half of 2025 alone, U.S. companies signed 14 licensing agreements worth up to $18.3 billion for Chinese-origin drugs, a huge jump from just 2 such deals in the same period a year earlier. Many of these partnerships involve potential blockbusters in cancer, metabolic disorders, and other areas where Chinese R&D is making leaps.
Oncology: China has become a hotbed for cancer drug innovation, especially with advanced biologics like bispecific antibodies. In May 2025, Pfizer paid a record $1.25 billion upfront to license a PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody from China’s 3SBio (a deal worth up to $6 billion with milestones). Weeks later, Bristol Myers Squibb struck an $11.5 billion alliance for a similar immunotherapy developed in China. Virtually every active clinical trial for certain cutting-edge cancer combos (like PD-1/VEGF drugs) now originates in China, making it a goldmine for Western firms seeking the next breakthrough. AstraZeneca, Merck, Novartis, and others have all scooped up Chinese cancer therapies in recent years as they cast their nets wider for innovation.
Metabolic & Obesity Drugs: Western pharma is also eyeing China’s contributions in metabolic diseases. Notably, Merck licensed a Chinese-developed GLP-1 oral drug (for diabetes/obesity) from Hansoh Pharma in late 2022 for up to $1.7 billion. And in 2025, Regeneron paid $80 million upfront (in a deal worth up to $2 billion) for rights to an experimental obesity drug from Hansoh. These deals underscore that Chinese labs are producing competitive candidates in the red-hot obesity/diabetes arena – an area of huge global market potential.
Autoimmune & Other Areas: While oncology leads, Chinese biotechs are also advancing novel therapies in immunology and autoimmune diseases. For example, multiple deals in 2024–25 have focused on inflammatory conditions and neurology, indicating breadth in China’s pipeline. As one industry banker observed, roughly one-third of all new assets licensed by large pharmas in 2024 originated from China, and this could rise to 40–50% in coming years. In other words, nearly half of Big Pharma’s in-licensed pipeline may soon be sourced from China – a radical change from a decade ago.
Underpinning this deal frenzy is a stark reversal of roles: China has shifted from mostly importing therapies to now exporting its homegrown innovations. Back in 2015, Chinese companies mainly signed “license-in” deals to bring foreign drugs to China. But by 2024, nearly half of China’s transactions were license-out deals, with Chinese firms granting global rights to their own drugs. In 2024 alone, Chinese biotechs out-licensed 94 novel projects to overseas partners, often at early clinical stages. This boom in outbound deals – especially for high-value cancer therapies (like ADCs and bispecific antibodies) – highlights China’s maturation as an innovation engine.
In a scientific paper published by Yan et al, the authors provided a comparative analysis between the US, EU, and China of new approved drugs from the years 2019- 2023.
Yan Y, Guo X, Li Z, Shi W, Long M, Yue X, Kong F, Zhao Z. New Drug Approvals in China: An International Comparative Analysis, 2019-2023. Drug Des Devel Ther. 2025 Apr 3;19:2629-2639. doi: 10.2147/DDDT.S514132.
In the paper, the authors retrieved approval data from from the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), European Medicines Agency (EMA), and Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA), including information on the generic name, trade name, applicants, target, approval date, drug type, approved indications, therapeutic area, the highest R&D status in China, and special approval status. The approval time gaps between China and other regions were calculated.
Results: Interestingly, China led with 256 new drug approvals, followed by the US (243 approvals), the EU (191 approvals), and Japan (187 approvals). Oncology, hematology, and infectiology were identified as the leading therapeutic areas globally and in China. Notably, PD-1 and EGFR inhibitors saw substantial approval, with 8 drugs each approved by the NMPA. China significantly reduced the approval timeline gap with the US and the EU since 2021, approving 15 first-in-class drugs during the study period.
The authors concluded, that despite the COVID-19 years, Chinese biotech has rapidly innovated in the biotech space and made up for the time gaps with increased research productivity.
Number of drug approvals by regulatory agency. Source: Yan Y, Guo X, Li Z, Shi W, Long M, Yue X, Kong F, Zhao Z. New Drug Approvals in China: An International Comparative Analysis, 2019-2023. Drug Des Devel Ther. 2025 Apr 3;19:2629-2639. doi: 10.2147/DDDT.S514132.
A comparison of drug approvals in US and China, as percentage of clinical use in various disease states. Source: Yan Y, Guo X, Li Z, Shi W, Long M, Yue X, Kong F, Zhao Z. New Drug Approvals in China: An International Comparative Analysis, 2019-2023. Drug Des Devel Ther. 2025 Apr 3;19:2629-2639. doi: 10.2147/DDDT.S514132.
China Biotech Innovation Hubs
The following was generated by Google AI
China has several prominent biotech innovation hubs, with the Yangtze River Delta region (including Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou) and Beijing being particularly strong. These regions leverage strong academic and research institutions, high R&D expenditures, and significant investment to foster a vibrant biotech ecosystem.
Here’s a closer look at some key hubs:
Yangtze River Delta:
Shanghai: A major hub with a focus on oncology, cell and gene therapy, and a strong track record of biotech IPOs. It’s home to the Zhangjiang Biotech and Pharmaceutical Base, known as China’s “Medicine Valley”.
Suzhou: Known for the BioBay industrial park, which houses numerous biotechnology and technology companies.
Hangzhou: Features a growing biotech sector, with companies like Hangzhou DAC Biotech.
Wuhan: Wuhan Biolake is a key player in areas like biomedicine, bio-agriculture, and bio-manufacturing.
Shenzhen: Features an innovation hub that supports synthetic biology startups and accelerates the commercialization of new biotech materials.
Key Factors Driving Growth:
Strong government support and investment: China has been actively promoting the growth of its biotech sector through various initiatives and funding programs.
High R&D expenditures: China is investing heavily in research and development, particularly in the tech, manufacturing, and biotech sectors.
Increasingly strong talent pool: China is producing a growing number of STEM graduates and globally recognized researchers.
AI and technology integration: AI is being applied to drug design and discovery, accelerating innovation.
Focus on specific areas: Different hubs are specializing in areas like oncology, regenerative medicine, and medical devices.
Overall, China’s biotech sector is experiencing rapid growth and is becoming a significant player in the global landscape, with these hubs leading the way.
Articles of Interest on International Biotech Venture Investment on the Open Access Scientific Journal Include:
Live Notes from JP Morgan Healthcare Conference Virtual Endpoints Preview: January 8-9 2024
Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.
Endpoints at #JPM24 | Primed to unlock biopharma’s next dealmaking wave
Endpoints at JP Morgan Healthcare Conference
January 8-9 | San Francisco, CA80 Mission St, San Francisco, CA
An oasis has emerged in the biopharma money desert as backers look to replenish capital — still, uncertainty remains on whether it’s a mirage or the much needed dealmaking bump the industry needs. Yet spirits run high as JPM24 marks the triumphant return of inking strategic alliances and peering into the industry crystal ball — while keeping an eye out for some major M&A.
We’re back live from San Francisco for JPM Monday and Tuesday — our calendar of can’t-miss panels and fireside chats will feature prominent biopharma leaders to watch. The Endpoints Hub provides the ultimate coworking space with everything you need — 1:1 and group meeting spots plus guest pass capabilities and more. Join us in-person at the Endpoints Hub or watch online to stay plugged into all the action.
8 JAN
Welcome remarks
8:05 AM – 8:25 AM PST
Pfizer vet Mikael Dolsten has some thoughts on Big Pharma R&D
Endpoints News founding editor John Carroll will sit down with longtime Pfizer CSO Mikael Dolsten to talk about Pfizer’s pipeline, what he’s learned on the job about preclinical research and development and what’s ahead for the pharma giant in drug development and deals.
Mikael Dolsten
Chief Scientific Officer, President, Pfizer Research & Development
Pfizer
Pfizer Mikael Dolsten: Pfizer produced a series of AI generated molecules with new properties. Sees rapid adoption of AI in the area of drug discovery and molecular design.
8:25 AM – 9:05 AM PST
What pharma wants: The industry’s dealmakers look ahead at 2024
The drug industry’s appetite for new assets hasn’t slowed down. Top business development execs will give their outlook on the year, what they’re looking for and how they see the market.
Glenn Hunzinger
Pharmaceutical & Life Sciences Consulting Solutions Leader
PwC US
Rachna Khosla
SVP, Head of Business Development
Amgen
James Sabry
Global Head of Pharma Partnering
Roche
Devang Bhuva
SVP, Corporate Development
Gilead Sciences, Inc.
Endpoints News
Dealmaking panel
Glenn Hunzinger: if you do not have a GLP1 will have a tough time getting a good market price for your company; capital markets are not where they want to be; sees a tough deal making climate like last year. The problem with many biotech companies are they are coming earlier to the venture capital because of greater funding needs and so it is imperative that they articulate the potential of their company in scientific detail
Rachna Khosla: Make sure your investors are not just CAPITAL PARTNERS but use their expertise and involve them in development issues you may have, especially ones that a young firm will face. The problem is most investments assume what the future looks like (for example how antibody drug conjugates, once a field left for dead, has been rejuvenated because of advances in chemistry).
James Sabry: noted that cardiac and metabolic drugs are now at the focus of many investors, especially with the new anti-obesity drugs on market
Devang Bhuva: Most deals we see start as collaborations or partnerships. You want to involve an alliance management team early in the deal making process. This process could take years.
9:05 AM – 9:20 AM PST
The IPO: How Apogee Therapeutics went public in the most challenging market in years
Not many biotechs went public in 2023. And of those that did, not many have had a great time of it. Apogee is the exception and our panel will offer a behind-the-scenes look at their decision to enter the market and what life is like as a young public company.
Michael Henderson
CEO
Apogee Therapeutics
Kyle LaHucik
MODERATOR
Senior Reporter
Endpoints News
Michael Henderson: Not many biotech IPOs deals happened in 2023. Michael feels it is because too many biotechs focused on building platforms, which was a hard sell in 2023. He felt not many biotechs had clear milestones and investors wanted a clear primary validated target. He said many biotech startups are in a funding crunch and most need at least $440M on their balance sheet to get to 2026.
9:50 AM – 10:10 AM PST
Top predictions for biotech in 2024
Catalent CEO Alessandro Maselli will be back at the big JPM healthcare confab to talk with Endpoints News founder John Carroll about their top predictions of what’s coming up for the biotech industry in 2024. The stakes couldn’t be higher as the industry grapples with headwinds and new opportunities in a gale of market forces. Two top observers share their thoughts on the year ahead.
Alessandro Maselli
President & CEO
Catalent
10:15 AM – 10:35 AM PST
Innovation at a crossroads: Keys to unlocking the value of science and technology
The industry has long discussed the promise of technology and the acceleration it provides in scientific advancement and across the industry value chain. However, the promise of its impact has yet to fully be realized. This discussion will outline the keys to unleashing this promise and the implications and actions to be taken by the biopharmaceutical companies across the industry.
Ray Pressburger
North America Life Sciences Industry Lead & Global Life Sciences Strategy Lead
Accenture
SPONSORED BY
10:35 AM – 11:05 AM PST
Activism and Investing: In conversation with Elliott Investment Management’s Marc Steinberg
Elliott has been behind many of 2023’s highest-profile healthcare investments, including multiple activist engagements and taking Syneos Health private. What has made large healthcare companies such interesting investment opportunities for firms like Elliott? What’s Elliott’s investing strategy in healthcare? And what should companies expect when an activist calls?
Marc Steinberg
Senior Portfolio Manager
Elliott Investment Management
Andrew Dunn
MODERATOR
Biopharma Correspondent
Endpoints News
11:05 AM – 11:35 AM PST
Creating ROI from AI
AI is predicted to transform the way drugs are made, from discovery to clinical trials to market. But beyond the initial hype and early adoption, where has AI made meaningful contributions to R&D? How does it help drug developers advance science? Endpoints publisher Arsalan Arif is convening a panel of leading experts to discuss the state of AI in the pharmaceutical landscape and the outlook for 2024. How does AI impact the drug pipeline, from the early steps of discovery to reducing trial failure rate?
Thomas Clozel
Co-Founder & CEO
Owkin
Venkat Sethuraman
SVP, Global Biometrics & Data Sciences
Bristol Myers Squibb
Frank O. Nestle
Global Head of Research & Chief Scientific Officer
Sanofi
Matthias Evers
Chief Business Officer
Evotec
Arsalan Arif
MODERATOR
Founder & Publisher
Endpoints News
SPONSORED BY
11:35 AM – 12:00 PM PST
Biopharma’s dealmaker: Behind the scenes with Centerview Partners co-president Eric Tokat
Almost every major biopharma deal in 2023 had Centerview’s name attached to it. And much of the time, Eric Tokat was the banker making those deals happen. Hear his outlook for 2024, how transactions are getting done and what’s placed his firm at the center of so much action.
E. Eric Tokat
Co-President, Investment Banking
Centerview Partners
CenterView Partners Eric Tokat feels dealmaking will improve in 2024, given the recent flurry of dealmaking at end of last year and right before main JPM Healthcare Conference. He says Centerview wants to help the biotechs they invest in on their strategic path. This may translate into buyers more actively involved (more than startups want) and buyers now are in the drivers seat as far as the timeline of deals and development.
Is the megamerger dead for this year? He says it is very hard to see two major mergers happening but there will be many smaller and mid size biotech deals happening, but these deals will be more speculative in nature.. The focus for large pharma is top line growth. Most of the buyers have an infrastructure and value is more of buying and dropping it in their business so there is now a huge emphasis on due diligence on whether synergies exist or not
12:00 PM – 12:30 PM PST
Founder, legend, leader: In conversation with Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi
Carolyn Bertozzi’s discoveries around bioorthogonal chemistry won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2022 and are at the heart of new therapies being tested in patients. Join us as we discuss what inspires her and where she sees the next big advances.
Carolyn Bertozzi
Prof. of Chemistry, Stanford University and Baker Family Director of Sarafan ChEM-H
Stanford University
Nicole DeFeudis
MODERATOR
Editor
Endpoints News
Bioorthogonal chemistry: class of high yielding chemical reactions that proceed rapidly and selectively in biological environments without side reactions toward endogenous functions. This is also a type of ‘click chemistry’ in biological system where only specifically alter the biomolecule of interest.
Orthogonal: two chemicals not interacting with each other
Dr. Bertozzi noted she has started a new Antibody-Drug-Conjugate (ADC) company which involves designing with biorthogonal chemistry to make new functional molecules with varying properties
She noted hardly any biologists knew anything about glycobiology when she first started. However now she feels pharma and academia are working very well with each other
Bioorthogonal and Click Chemistry Curated by Prof. Carolyn R. Bertozzi, 2022 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded jointly to ACS Central Science Editor-in-Chief, Carolyn R. Bertozzi of Stanford University, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and K. Barry Sharpless of Scripps Research, for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.
To celebrate this remarkable achievement, 2022 Nobel Prize winner Professor Carolyn R. Bertozzi has curated this Bioorthogonal and Click Chemistry Virtual Issue, highlighting papers published across ACS journals that have built upon the foundational work in this exciting area of chemistry.
Bioorthogonal reactions are chemical reactions that neither interact with nor interfere with a biological system. The participating functional groups must be inert to biological moieties, must selectively reactive with each other under biocompatible conditions, and, for in vivo applications, must be nontoxic to cells and organisms. Additionally, it is helpful if one reactive group is small and therefore minimally perturbing of a biomolecule into which it has been introduced either chemically or biosynthetically. Examples from the past decade suggest that a promising strategy for bioorthogonal reaction development begins with an analysis of functional group and reactivity space outside those defined by nature. Issues such as stability of reactants and products (particularly in water), kinetics, and unwanted side reactivity with biofunctionalities must be addressed, ideally guided by detailed mechanistic studies. Finally, the reaction must be tested in a variety of environments, escalating from aqueous media to biomolecule solutions to cultured cells and, for the most optimized transformations, to live organisms.
9 JAN
9:40 AM – 10:10 AM PST
Biotech downturn survival school
Our panelists have seen the worst, and made it through to the other side. Join us for downturn survival school as our panelists talk about what sets apart the ones who make it through tough times.
These panalists think it will be specialist capital year to shine while the general capital is still sitting on the sidelines
JJ Kang
CEO
Appia Bio
“2023 was a tough year while 2020 was a boon year to start a company. We will continue to see these cycles; many of these new CEOs have never seen a biotech downturn yet and may not know how to preserve capital for the downturn”.
“Doing a partnership with Kite Pharmaceuticals early in our startp allowed us to get work done without risking a lot of capital, even if it means equity and asset dilution. That makes sense. However even if you are small insist on being an equal partner.”
“There are many investors we talk to who do not want to invest in cell therapy. Too risky now”
Carl Gordon
Managing Partner
OrbiMed Advisors
There are many macroeconomic factors affecting investment and capital today which will carry on through 2024. Not raising money when you do not need money is a bad philosophy. Always bbe raising captial. This is especially true when you have to rely on hedge funds. Parnerships howeve are sometimes the only way for small biotechs to leverage their strengths.
Joshua Boger
Executive Chair
Alkeus Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Boger: Expect volatility for 2024. This environment feels very different than past downturns.
Even in downturns there is still lots of capital; remember access to human capital is better in a downturn and is easier to access; however it has become harder to get drug approvals
The panelists agree that access to capital and funding will be as tricky in 2024 than 2023. They did
suggest that a new funding avenue, private credit, may be a source of capital. This is discussed below:
When thinking about a private alternative investment asset class, the first thing that springs to mind is private equity. But there’s one more asset class with the word private in its name that has recently gained much attention. We’re talking about private credit.
Indeed, this once little-known investment strategy is now growing rapidly in popularity, offering private investors worldwide an exciting opportunity to diversify their portfolio with, in theory, less risky investments that yield significant returns.
Private credit investments refer to investors lending money to companies who then repay the loan at a given interest rate within the predetermined period.
The private credit market has grown significantly over the past years, rising from $875 million in 2020 to $1.4 trillion at the beginning of 2023.
Please WATCH VIDEO BY GOLDMAN SACHS ON PRIVATE CREDIT
The New Molecule: How breakthrough technologies are actually changing pharma R&D
Join us for a look at how AI, machine learning and generative technologies are actually being applied inside drugmakers’ labs. We’ll explore how new technologies are being used, their implications, how they intersect with regulatory and IP issues and how this fast-changing field is likely to evolve.
Kailash Swarna
Managing Director & Global Life Sciences Clinical Development Lead
Accenture
Artificial Intelligence is making impact in a grand way on biology in three aspects:
Speeding up target validation: now we can get through 300 molecules a day
Predicition like AlphaFold is doing; molecular simulations
Document submission especially with regulatory and IND submissions
Pamela Carroll
COO
Isomorphic Labs formerly of AlphaFold
We were first with Novartis at last year JPM and was one year old but parnering with them in that initial year was very important for sealing the deal.
They are looking now at neurologic diseases like ALS. She wondered whether ALS is actually multiple diseases and we need to stratify patients like we do in oncology trials. Their main competion is the whole tech world like Amazon, Google and other Machine Learning companies so being a tech player in the biotech world means you are not just competing with other biotechs but large tech companies as well.
Jorge Conde
General Partner
Andreessen Horowitz
Need is still great for drug discovery; early adopters show AI tools can be used in big pharma. There are lots of applications of AI in managing care; a lot of back office applications including patient triaging. He does not see big AI mergers with pharma companies – this will be mainly partnerships not M&A deals
Alicyn Campbell
Chief Scientific Officer
Evinova, a Healthtech Subsidiary of the AstraZeneca Group
There is a need to turn AI for real world example. For example AI tools were used in clinical trials to determine patient cohorts with pneumonitis. At Evinova they are determining how AI can hel[p show clinical benefit with respect to efficacy and safety
Joshua Boger at #JPM24 (Brian Benton Photography)
January 12, 2024 09:06 AM ESTUpdated 10:00 AM PeopleStartups
Vertex founder Joshua Boger on surviving downturns, ‘painful’ partnerships, and the importance of culture: #JPM24
While the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference was full of voices of measured optimism, rooting for the market to bounce back in 2024, one longtime biotech leader warned against setting any firm expectations.
Instead of predicting when the downturn may end, Vertex Pharmaceuticals founder Joshua Boger said he advises biotech leaders to expect — and plan for — volatility. Speaking Tuesday on an Endpoints News panel alongside OrbiMed’s Carl Gordon and Appia Bio CEO JJ Kang, Boger shared lessons learned on surviving downturns, striking pharma deals, and the importance of keeping a company’s culture based on his two decades of founding and leading Vertex as CEO from 1989 to 2009. The 72-year-old is now serving as executive chairman of Alkeus Pharmaceuticals, a startup developing a rare disease drug.
“I never experienced a straight line up,” Boger said. “Everything had its cycles, and it was how you respond to the cycle, not by predicting when the end is going to be, but just by responding to the present situation.”
At Boger’s first appearance at the JP Morgan conference in 1991, he said the conference’s theme was the end of biotech financing. Just a few months later, Regeneron successfully went public, rapidly changing the outlook for the whole field.
“We had no idea we were ever going to take public money,” he said. “When Regeneron did their IPO, we went, ‘Whoa, there’s something happening here,’ and we pivoted quickly.”
Vertex went public later that year. Throughout his 20-year tenure, Boger said no pharma company ever made an acquisition offer for Vertex, which now commands a market value of $110 billion and recently won the first FDA approval for a CRISPR gene editing therapy.
“We had an uber corporate policy to always make ourselves more expensive than anyone would stomach,” Boger said.
However, Vertex did strike a range of partnerships with Big Pharmas, which Boger described as a painful but necessary part of running a biotech startup.
“It’s impossible for a partnership not to slow you down,” he said. “You can and should try as hard as you can not to do that, but just count on it. They’ll slow you down.”
Boger said startups should insist on being equal partners in pharma deals, at least making sure they have a seat at a partner’s development meetings.
“Realize they’re going to be painful, it’s going to be horrible, and you need to do it,” Boger said.
While Vertex suffered through layoffs, stock price plunges, and trial failures, Boger credited a focus on culture as key to its long-term success.
“It’s the most important ingredient for a successful company,” he said. “Technology is acquirable. Culture is not acquirable. There are 10 companies that will fail because of culture for every one that succeeds, and the successful companies in retrospect will almost always have special cultural aspects that kept them through those downtimes.”
JPM24 opens with ADCs the hottest ticket in San Francisco
The overall deal flow in biopharma tapered off in 2023 but the big companies sure know what they want (what they really, really want), according to a new report from J.P. Morgan.
And that’s antibody-drug conjugates, which drove a fourth-quarter spike in licensing deal proceeds and provided a glimmer of hope to an industry battered by outside forces and grim financing prospects.
J.P. Morgan’s annual 2023 Biopharma Licensing and Venture Report arrived on the eve of the firm’s famous conference, which is set to welcome thousands of attendees in San Francisco today—East Coast weather permitting.
2023 was tough, but clinical biotechs still had a lot of opportunities to wheel and deal, according to J.P. Morgan. While licensing deals, venture investments, M&A and IPOs were down overall in the fourth quarter, deal values stayed fairly high thanks to a flurry of late-stage tie ups.
Follow the Fierce team’s coverage of the 2024 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference here.
Biopharma licensing partnerships accounted for $63 billion in total value during the fourth quarter from 108 deals. Just one deal—Merck’s ADC partnership with Daiichi Sankyo—accounted for $22 billion of that. Another huge one was another ADC bet, with Bristol Myers Squibb signing on to work with SystImmune for a total value of $8.4 billion. If you exclude the Merck deal, the total value of these partnerships is still higher than the previous quarter, which ended with $32.1 billion.
The total number of licensing deals compares to 149 in the same quarter a year earlier, 195 for Q4 2021 and 223 for Q4 2022.
As for venture investments, the year closed out with $17 billion total across 250 rounds, thanks to $3.5 billion earned through 79 rounds in the last quarter. Aiolos Bio snagged the title of largest venture round of the quarter with $245 million, which also proved to be the largest series A, too.
There was just one IPO in all of the fourth quarter—Cargo Therapeutics making the plunge for $300 million—and 13 overall for the year. It’s a far cry from the heyday of 2021 and experts are still unsure what 2024 will hold. J.P. Morgan reported $2.5 billion raised from 12 completed biopharma IPOs for the year on Nasdaq and NYSE. Nine out of the 12 companies had clinical programs when they took the leap to the public markets. As of December 13, five of the companies were trading above their IPO price.
As for M&A, December saw a rush of Big Pharmas snapping up companies around Christmas. J.P. Morgan tallied the fourth quarter at $37.6 billion and $128.8 billion across 112 total acquisitions for all of 2023.
AbbVie was the top buyer of the quarter with the two largest acquisitions thanks to the $10 billion outlay for ImmunoGen and $8.7 billion buy of Cerevel Therapeutics.
All of this adds up to 270 total deals in the fourth quarter total, which is lower than the third quarter which exceeded 300.
J.P. Morgan sees some big potential for smaller biopharmas looking for licensing partners, as Big Pharmas have been handing out larger upfront payments for the deals they really want.
Cancer was once again the most in-demand therapeutic areas, reaching a new height of $86.1 billion in 2023. Followed by $21.1 billion for neurological disorders.
For More Articles on Real Time Conference Coverage in this Open Access Scientific Journal see:
The Vibrant Philly Biotech Scene: Recent Happenings & Deals
Curator: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.
As the office and retail commercial real estate market has been drying up since the COVID pandemic, commercial real estate developers in the Philadelphia area have been turning to the health science industry to suit their lab space needs. This includes refurbishing old office space as well as new construction.
Gattuso secures $290M construction loan for life sciences building on Drexel campus
By Ryan Mulligan – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal
Dec 19, 2022
Gattuso Development Partners and Vigilant Holdings of New York have secured a $290 million construction loan for a major life sciences building set to be developed on Drexel University’s campus.
The funding comes from Houston-based Corebridge Financial, with an additional equity commitment from Boston-based Baupost Group, which is also a partner on the project. JLL’s Capital Markets group arranged the loan.
Plans for the University City project at 3201 Cuthbert St. carry a price tag of $400 million. The 11-story building will total some 520,000 square feet, making it the largest life sciences research and lab space in the city when it comes online.
The building at 3201 Cuthbert will rise on what had served as a recreation field used by Drexel and is located next to the Armory. Gattuso Development, which will lease the parcel from Drexel, expects to to complete the project by fall 2024. Robert A.M. Stern Architects designed the building.
A rendering of a $400 million lab and research facility Drexel University and Gattuso Development Partners plan to build at 3201 Cuthbert St. in Philadelphia.
The building is 45% leased by Drexel and SmartLabs, an operator of life sciences labs. Drexel plans to occupy about 60,000 square feet, while SmartLabs will lease two floors totaling 117,000 square feet.
“We believe the project validates Philadelphia’s emergence as a global hub for life sciences research, and we are excited to begin construction,” said John Gattuso, the co-founder and president of Philadelphia-based Gattuso Development.
Ryan Ade, Brett Segal and Christopher Peck of JLL arranged the financing.
Tmunity CEO Usman Azam departing to lead ‘stealth’ NYC biotech firm
By John George – Senior Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal
Feb 7, 2022
The CEO of one of Philadelphia’s oldest cell therapy companies is departing to take a new job in the New York City area.
Usman “Oz” Azam, who has been CEO of Tmunity Therapeutics since 2016, will lead an unnamed biotechnology company currently operating in stealth mode.
In a posting on his LinkedIn page, Azam said, “After a decade immersed in cell therapies and immuno-oncology, I am now turning my attention to a new opportunity, and will be going back to where I started my life sciences career in neurosciences.”
Tmunity, a University of Pennsylvania spinout, is looking to apply CAR T-cell therapy, which has proved to be successful in treating liquid cancers, for the treatment of solid tumors.
Last summer, Tmunity suspended clinical testing of its lead cell therapy candidate targeting prostate cancer after two patients in the study died. Azam, in an interview with the Business Journal in June, said the company, which had grown to about 50 employees since its launch in 2015, laid off an undisclosed number of employees as a result of the setback.
Azam said on LinkedIn he is still a big believer in CAR T-cell therapy, noting Tmunity co-founder Dr. Carl June and his colleagues at Penn just published in Nature the 10-year landmark clinical outcomes study with the first CD19 CAR-T patients and programs.
“It’s just the beginning,” he stated. “I’m excited about the prospect of so many new cell- and gene-based therapies emerging in the next five to 10 years to tackle many solid and liquid tumors, and I hope we all continue to see the remarkable impact this makes on patients and families around the world.”
Azam could not be reached for comment Monday. Tmunity has engaged a search firm to identify his successor.
Tmunity, which is based in Philadelphia, has its own manufacturing operations in East Norriton. Tmunity’s founders include June and fellow Penn cell therapy pioneer Bruce Levine, who led the development of a CAR T-cell therapy now marketed by Novartis as Kymriah, a treatment for certain types of blood cancers.
In therapy using CAR-T cells, a patient’s T cells — part of their immune system — are removed and genetically modified in the laboratory. After they are re-injected into a patient, the T cells are better able to attack and destroy tumors. CAR is an acronym for chimeric antigen receptor. Chimeric antigen receptors are receptor proteins that have been engineered to give T cells their improved ability to target tumors.
Jodie Harris is a Philadelphia native who has spent the last 15 years in the U.S. Department of Treasury.
By Ryan Mulligan – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal
The Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. has tapped U.S. Department of Treasury veteran Jodie Harris to be its next president.
Harris succeeds Anne Bovaird Nevins, who spent 15 years in the organization and took over as president in January 2020 before stepping down at the end of last year. Executive Vice President Sam Rhoads has been interim president.
Harris, a Philadelphia native who currently serves as director of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund for the Department of Treasury, was picked after a regional and national search and will begin her tenure as president on June 1. She becomes the 12th head of PIDC and the first African-American woman to lead the organization.
PIDC is a public-private economic development corporation founded by the city and the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia in 1958. It mainly uses industrial and commercial real estate projects to attract jobs, foster business opportunities and spur overall community growth. The organization has spurred over $18.5 billion in financing across its 65 years.
In a statement, Harris said that it is “a critical time for Philadelphia’s economy.”
“I’m especially excited for the opportunity to lead such an important and impactful organization in my hometown of Philadelphia,” Harris said. “As head of the CDFI Fund, I know first-hand what it takes to drive meaningful, sustainable, and equitable economic growth, especially in historically underserved communities.”
Harris is a graduate of the University of Maryland and received an MBA and master of public administration from New York University. In the Treasury Department, Harris’ most recent work aligns with PIDC’s economic development mission. At the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, she oversaw a $331 million budget, mainly comprised of grant and administrative funding for various economic programs. Under Harris’ watch, the fund distributed over $3 billion in pandemic recovery funding, its highest level of appropriated grants ever.
Harris has been a part of the Treasury Department for 15 years, including as director of community and economic development policy.
In addition to government work, Harris has previously spent time in the private, academia and nonprofit sectors. In the beginning of her career, Harris worked at Meridian Bank and Accenture before turning to become a social and education policy researcher at New York University. She also spent two years as president of the Urban Business Assistance Corporation in New York.
Mayor Jim Kenney said that Philadelphia is “poised for long-term growth” and Harris will help drive it.
Real estate company SkyREM plans to spend $250 million converting the historic Quartermaster site in South Philadelphia to a life sciences campus with restaurants and a hotel.
The redevelopment would feature wet and dry lab space for research, development and bio-manufacturing.
The renamed Quartermaster Science + Technology Park is near the southwest corner of Oregon Avenue and South 20th Street in the city’s Girard Estates neighborhood. It’s east of the Quartermaster Plaza retail center, which sold last year for $100 million.
The 24-acre campus is planned to have six acres of green space, an Aldi grocery store opening by March and already is the headquarters for Indego, the bicycle share program in Philadelphia.
Six buildings totaling 1 million square feet of space would be used for research and development labs. There’s 500,000 square feet of vacant space available for life sciences and high technology companies with availabilities as small as 1,000 square feet up to 250,000 square feet contiguous. There’s also 150,000 square feet of retail space available.
The office park has 200,000 square feet already occupied by tenants. The Philadelphia Job Corps Center and Delaware Valley Intelligence Center are tenants at the site.
A rendering shows part of the Quartermaster Science + Technology Park as a redeveloped mixed-use life science campus.
QUARTERMASTER / PROVIDED BY FIFTEEN
The campus was previously used by the military as a place to produce clothing, footwear and personal equipment during World War I and II. The clothing factory closed in 1994. The Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.
“We had a vision to preserve the legacy of this built-to-last historic Philadelphia landmark and transform it to create a vibrant space where the best and brightest want to innovate, collaborate, and work,” SkyREM CEO and Founder Alex Dembitzer said in a statement.
SkyREM, a real estate investor and developer, has corporate offices in New York and Philadelphia. The company acquired the site in 2001.
Vered Nohi, SkyREM’s regional executive director of new business development, called the redevelopment “transformational” for Philadelphia.
SkyREM announced the redevelopment of the Quartermaster campus in South Philadelphia into a life sciences campus with restaurants and a hotel. This rendering looks across Oregon Avenue toward the southwest corner of Oregon and 21st Street.
QUARTERMASTER / PROVIDED BY FIFTEEN
Quartermaster would join a wave of new life sciences projects being developed in the surrounding area and across the region.
The site is near both interstates 76 and 95 and is about 2 miles north of the Philadelphia Navy Yard, which has undergone a similar transformation from a military hub to a major life sciences and mixed-use redevelopment project. The Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. is also in the process of selecting a developer to create a massive cell and gene therapy manufacturing complex across two sites totaling about 40 acres on Southwest Philadelphia’s Lower Schuylkill riverfront.
A rendering shows part of the future Quartermaster Science and Technology Park in South Philadelphia. The 24-acre campus is planned to have six buildings with 1 million square feet of life science space.
QUARTERMASTER / PROVIDED BY FIFTEEN
SkyREM is working with Maryland real estate firm Scheer Partners to lease the science and technology space. Philadelphia’s MPN Realty will handle leasing of the retail space. Architecture firm Fifteen is working on the project’s design.
Scheer Partners Senior Vice President Tim Conrey said the Quartermaster conversion will help companies solve for “speed to market” as demand for life science space in the region has been strong.
Brandywine Realty Trust originally planned to redevelop a Radnor medical office into lab and office space, split 50-50 between the two uses.
After changes in demand for lab and office space, Brandywine (NYSE: BDN) recently completed the 168,000-square-foot, four-story building at 250 King of Prussia Road in Radnor fully for life sciences.
“The pipeline is now 100% life sciences, which, while requiring more capital, is also generating longer term leases at a higher return on cost,” Brandywine CEO Jerry Sweeney of the project said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday.
At the same time, Brandywine is holding off on developing new office buildings unless it has a tenant lined up in advance.
The shift reflects how Philadelphia-based Brandywine continues to lean into — and bet big — on life sciences.
Brandywine is the city’s largest owner of trophy office buildings and has several major development projects in the works. The company is planning to eventually develop 3 million square feet of life sciences space. For now, 800,000 square feet of life sciences space is under development, including a 12-story, 417,000-square-foot life sciences building at 3151 Market St. and a 29-story building with 200,000 square feet of life sciences space at 3025 John F. Kennedy Blvd. Both are part of the multi-phase Schuylkill Yards project underway near 30th Street Station in University City.
Once its existing projects are completed, Brandywine would have 800,000 square feet of life sciences space, making up 8% of its portfolio.Sweeney said the company wants to grow that figure to 21%.
Brandywine is developing a 145,000-square-foot, build-to-suit office building at 155 King of Prussia Road in Radnor for Arkema, a France-based global supplier of specialty materials. The building will be Arkema’s North American headquarters. Construction began in January and is scheduled to be completed in late 2024.
Brandywine reported that since November it raised over $705 million through fourth-quarter asset sales, an unsecured bond transaction and a secured loan. The company has “complete availability” on its $600 million unsecured line of credit, Sweeney said.
Brandywine sold a 95% leased, 86,000-square-foot office building at 200 Barr Harbor Drive in West Conshohocken for $30.5 million. The company also sold its 50% ownership interest in the 1919 Market joint venture for $83.2 million to an undisclosed buyer. 1919 Market St. is a 29-story building with apartments, office and commercial space. Brandywine co-developed the property with LCOR and the California State Teacher’s Retirement System.
Brandywine declined to comment and LCOR could not be reached.
Brandywine’s core portfolio is 91% leased.
The project at 250 King of Prussia Road cost $103.7 million and was recently completed. The renovation included 12-foot high floor-to-ceiling glass on the second floor, a new roof, lobby, elevator core, common area with a skylight and an added structured parking deck.
Located in the Radnor Life Science Center, a new campus with nearly 1 million square feet of lab, research and office space, Sweeney said it’s a “magnet” for biotech companies. Avantor, a global manufacturer and distributor of life sciences products, is headquartered in the complex.
Sweeney said Brandywine is “very confident” demand will stay strong for life sciences in Radnor. The building at 250 King of Prussia Road is projected to be fully leased by early 2024.
“Larger users we’re talking to, they just tend to take a little bit more time than we would like as they go through technical requirements and space planning requirements,” Sweeney said.
While Brandywine is aiming to increase its life sciences footprint, the company is being selective about what it builds next. The company may steer away from developments other than life sciences. The Schuylkill Yards project, for example, features a significant life sciences portion in University City.
“Other than fully leased build-to-suit opportunities, our future development starts are on hold,” Sweeney said, “pending more leasing on the existing joint venture pipeline and more clarity on the cost of debt capital and cap rates.”
Brandywine said about 70% to 75%of suburban tenants have returned to offices while that number has been around 50% in Philadelphia. At this point, though, it hasn’t yet affected demand when leasing space. Some tenants, for example, have moved out of the city while others have moved in.
In the fourth quarter, Brandywine had $55.7 million funds from operations, or 32 cents per share. That’s down from $60.4 million, or 35 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2021. Brandywine generated $129 million in revenue in the fourth quarter, up slightly from $125.5 in the year-ago period.
Brandywine stock is up 6.4% since the start of the year to $6.70 per share on Monday afternoon.
Many of Brandywine’s properties are in desirable locations, which have seen demand remain strong despite challenges facing offices, on par with industry trends.
Brandywine’s 12-story, 417,000-square-foot building at 3151 Market St. is on budget for $308 million and on schedule to be completed in the second quarter of 2024. Sweeney said Brandywine anticipates entering a construction loan in the second half of 2023, which would help complete the project. The building, being developed along with a global institutional investor,would be used for life sciences, innovation and office space as part of the larger Schuylkill Yards development in University City.
The company’s 29-story building at 3025 John F. Kennedy Blvd. with 200,000 square feet of life sciences space and 326 luxury apartments, is also on budget, costing $287.3 million, and on time, eyeing completion in the third quarter of this year.
Near Term Investment Outlook for 2023: A Perspective from Advisors Potentially Affecting M&A Landscape
Curator: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.
UPDATED 11/07/2025
The Global Generic Drugs Market in 2025. Valued at USD 437.2 billion in 2024, is set to grow at a 6.3% CAGR till 2033—and India stands at the heart of this transformation. From Sun Pharma, Aurobindo, Cipla, and Dr. Reddy’s to a new wave of biotech-driven manufacturers, India continues to power global access to affordable, high-quality medicines. With innovation in APIs, biosimilars, and complex generics, India isn’t just the “pharmacy of the world” – it’s shaping the future of equitable healthcare.
08/15/2023
The following is an adaptation from various reports and the forseen changes in forecast for different sectors as well as the general investment landscape for the near future (2022-2023). Of course projections may change given changes in undewrlying fundamentals.
Many financial advisors and professionals feel the U.S. is in a late-cycle for its economy, with a significant slowing of corporate earnings in the midst of higher than usual inflation {although inflation estimates are being halved from its current 8-10% for next year}. Consensus investment strategies deemed favorable include US (not international) equities with high quality assest and away from cyclicals. This represents the near end of a business cycle. As growth returns and interest rates increase we may seen the entrance into a new business cycle, although this may not happen until later 2023. In general, it is advised investors move out of cyclicals as the economy continues to slow and into large and mid cap US equities.
This change in landscape may be very favorable to the overall Health Care and Information Technology sectors. In health care, Life Sciences Tools and Services as well as Medical Devices are expected to outperform. In IT, IT Services, software and Networking are favored sectors while communication services like Publishing Services are considered to be Neutral to Unfavorable.
What does this mean for Life Sciences and Health Related small companies looking for an Exit or M&A strategies?
With higher interest rates, credit markets may continue to deteriote and companies may have to look toward Global Macro to find any funding through cash or credit markets. Equity Hedge strategies may be neutral to unfavorable with Event Driven opportunities like distressed deals unfavorable but most analysts do consider Merger Arbitrage as Event Driven strategy to be favorable. A competitive and narrow merger and acquisition environment is expected to last through 2023.
A general consensus for a neutroal environment is seen for most Private Equity, although a more favorable environment for small and mid cap buyouts may exist. Recent short term weakness in the IT sector has led to diminished exit valuations however this may be a good entry point for Growth Equity and Venture Capital. Private Debt strategies look unfavorable due to potential US recessions and potential underwriting issues. Therefore Favored Private Capital strategies include Private Equity for Small and Mid Cap Buyouts and Growth Equity and Venture Capital.
All of the stars are aligned for there to be a flurry of deals activity across all areas of the sector despite the slow start to the year so far. Many large pharma players are flush with cash (particularly those that have COVID-19 treatments in their arsenal), biotech valuations have been normalizing after years of a boom market and the 2025 patent cliff is rapidly approaching, all making for a strong deal environment.
Given the broader labor changes, supply shortages and constantly changing supply chain strategies and operations, the focus on quality can be challenging to sustain. Yet the downside can have massive impacts on businesses, including the potential inability to manufacture products.
The long litany of macroeconomic and regulatory headwinds has CEOs looking for transactions that are easily integrated and will get cash off their balance sheet as inflationary pressures mount.
Pharmaceutical & life sciences deals outlook
Increased scrutiny from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) around larger deals could mean that 2022 will be a year of bolt-on transactions in the $5 to $15 billion range as pharma companies take multiple shots on goal in order to make up for revenues lost to generic competition in the remainder of the decade. However, don’t rule out the potential for larger deals — consolidation is good for the health ecosystem and drives broader efficiency.
Expect to see big pharma picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill the pipeline gaps that are likely to start in 2024. While market conditions suggest bargain prices for biotech are possible, recent transactions indicate that pharma companies are still paying significantly above current trading prices (ranging from approximately 50 to 100% of current trading), but below the peak valuations of recent memory.
In the first few months of the year, semi-annualized deal value was down 58% from the same period last year, with companies investing just $61.7 billion so far. Only 137 deals were announced during that time, compared to 204 in the year-prior period.
Talk of drug pricing regulations continues in Washington as Congress bats around a pared down version of the Build Back Better plan. Expect some of that tension to ease in the fall if a new Congress takes on a different agenda.
Other areas of the sector like medical devices face similar headwinds from regulators, and continue to deal with a greater impact from semiconductor shortages. Even though semi-annualized deal value in the medical device space is down 85% from the same period the prior year, expect these companies to remain focused on M&A as the subsector searches for alternative forms of revenue — particularly from new consumer-centric technologies.
Macroeconomic headwinds and geopolitical tensions have created volatility in spending at CDMOs and CROs, limiting their willingness to deploy capital as the uncertainty persists.
No big buyouts were revealed during the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference for a third year in a row. Big pharma firms are in acquisition mode, but execs stress desire for easy integrations and scientific alliances.
Biopharmaceutical industry players – and reporters – eagerly await merger and acquisition announcements going into the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, hoping to scrutinize which big pharma is buying which other company for signs of what the deal-making environment will be like in the coming year. And in 2022, for the third year in a row, the meeting started with no big M&A deals.
They and their peers insisted during J.P. Morgan presentations and Q&A sessions as well as in interviews with Scrip that they do intend to invest in business development in 2022, but with a primary focus on smaller bolt-on acquisitions as well as licensing deals and collaboration agreements. Bolt-on deals have been the focus for the past few years. (Also see “The Pandemic Hurt, But EY Expects More Biopharma Deal-Making In 2021” – Scrip, 11 Jan, 2021.)
Amgen CEO Bradway On Deals: Good (Smaller) Opportunities Are Vast
Amgen is enthusiastic about deals of all sizes, including a new Arrakis collaboration, and is interested in large transactions like its Otezla buy – but Bradway said right-priced opportunities are fewer and farther between.
While investors and others are clamoring for potential buyers to execute large transactions, Amgen CEO Robert Bradway made the astute – and as he pointed out, obvious – observation that there simply are more small, early-stage ventures to partner with than there are large, later-stage companies to acquire. Bradway also noted that while Amgen would like to buy another growing commercial-stage product like Otezla (apremilast), not only are few available but there are few assets at a price that still leaves value on the table for both companies’ investors.
The following podcast from Pricewaterhouse Cooper Health Research Institute (called Next in Health) discusses some of the trends in healthcare M&A and is a great listen. However from 6:30 on the podcast discusses a new trend which is occuring in the healthcare company boardroom, which is this new focus on integrating companies that have proven ESG (or environmental, social, governance) functions within their organzations. As stated, doing an M&A deal with a company with strong ESG is looked favorably among regulators now.
Please click on the following link to hear a Google Podcast Next in Health episode
Greylock Partners has raised $500 million to invest exclusively in seed-stage startups. The announcement comes a year after the firm raised $1 billion for its 16th flagship fund to invest in early- and growth-stage tech startups.
Guo and general partner Saam Motamedi said in an interview the fund is part of an expansion of a $1.1 billion fund, which we reported last year, to $1.6 billion, The Information reported. The funding is among the industry’s largest devoted to seed investments, which often represent a startup’s first outside capital.
The pool of funds will give the 56-year-old venture capital firm the ability to write large checks at “lean-in valuations” and emphasize its commitment to early-stage investing, said general partner Sarah Guo. In a thread post on Twitter, Greylock said, “We at @GreylockVC are excited to announce we’ve raised $500M dedicated to seed investing. This is the industry’s largest pool of venture capital dedicated to backing founders at day one.”
In 2018 most of deals were in CART area but now we are seeing more series A rounds that are on novel mechanisms as well as rare diseases. US is still highest in venture capital series A but next is China. 10 of top ex US VC are from China, a whole lot of money.
Preclinical is very strong for US VC but China VC is focused on clinical. First time this year we see US series A break above 100. But ex US the series A is going down. Although preclinical deals in US is coming back not like as good as in 2006. But alot of > 1 billion $ deals. Most of money into mAbs and protein therapy; antisense is big and cell therapy is big too; small molecule not as much
ClearView Healthcare
Which innovation classes attracted VC in 2018?
Oncology drives a disproportionate focus could be driven by pharma focus on oncology; however there is some focus on neuro and infectious disease
therapeutic classes: shift to differentiated technology…. companies want technologic platforms not just drugs. Nucleic Acid tech and antibody tech is high need platforms. Startups can win by developing a strong platform not just a drug
There are pros and cons of developing a platform company versus a focused company. Many VCs have a portfolio and want something to fit in so look for a focused company and may not want a platform company. Pfizer feels that when alot of money is available (like now) platform investing is fine but when money becomes limited they will focus on those are what will be needed to fill therapy gaps. They believe buy the therapy and only rent the platform.
Merck does feel the way Pfizer does but they have separate ventures so they can look and license platforms. they are active in looking at companies with new modalities but they are focused on the money so they feel best kept in hands of biotech not pharma.
At Celgene they were solely focused on approvals not platforms. Alot of money is required to get these platforms to market. Concentration for platform companies should be the VCs not partnering or getting bought out by pharma. it seems from panel speakers from pharma that they are waiting for science to prove itself and waiting for favorable monetary environments (easy money). However it seems they (big pharma) are indicating that money is drying up or at least expect it too.
At Axial and with VCs they feel it is important to paint a picture or a vision at the early stage.
At Ontogeny, they focus on evaluating assets especially and most important, ThE MANAGEMENT TEAM. There are not that many great talented drug development management teams he feels out there even though great science out there.
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66% R&D-Intensive Companies *Of those: 89% have annual revenues under $25 million, 4% have annual revenues between $25 million and $1 billion, 7% have annual revenues over $1 billion.
Translating Genetics into Medicine, April 25, 2019, 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM, The New York Academy of Sciences, 7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich St Fl 40, New York
2019 Koch Institute Symposium – Machine Learning and Cancer, June 14, 2019, 8:00 AM-5:00 PM ET MIT Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA
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