Following a significant decline in 2023, private investments in public equity (PIPEs) are rebounding strongly in 2024. Through late May, the collective value of PIPEs has already surpassed the full year 2023 by more than three times, and is also ahead of 2022.

In April 2024, BioWorld reported on 323 updates on phase I-III clinical trials, marking a 24% increase from March’s 261 updates.

In April, the U.S. FDA approved 26 new drugs, the sixth-highest monthly total going back to 2016. This is slightly lower than March’s record-setting 30 approvals, the highest count in BioWorld’s records. By comparison, the FDA approved an average of about 16 drugs per month in 2023, 12.5 per month in 2022, and 17 per month in both 2021 and 2020.

A new horizon may be opening up in low-grade serious ovarian cancer (LGSOC) with the advent of Verastem Oncology Inc.’s therapy pairing two small molecules: avutometinib (VS-6766), a kinase inhibitor that binds to and inhibits the kinase activities of RAF and MEK to block the signal transduction pathways they mediate; and defactinib (VS-6063), an inhibitor of FAK.