Fresh off raising $640 million in private financing earlier this summer, Germany's Curevac BV burst onto the public market Friday with a $213.3 million Nasdaq IPO. Priced at a top-of-range $16 per share (NADAQ:CVAC), the company's stock rose more than 249% to close at $55.90 Aug. 14, buoyed by enthusiasm for its mRNA vaccine program against SARS-CoV-2. Majority shareholder and longtime Curevac backer Dievini Hopp Biotech Holding GmbH & Co. KG invested €100 million (US$118.3 million) in the company through a concurrent private placement.
Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Dr. Falk, JN Nova, Lumos, Merck, Prometheus, Revive.
Immunoscape Ltd. closed an $11 million global equity financing round led by U.S.-based venture firm Anzu Partners along with University of Tokyo Edge Capital in Japan, and Indonesia's NPR Holdings. The company plans to use the funds to ramp up its immune profiling technology platform, which performs deep T-cell analysis, and expand partnerships to develop vaccines for COVID-19 and other viruses as well as targeted oncology therapies.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: 4D Molecular, Akeso, Antengene, Biomarin, Enzychem, Genentech, Hoth, Micurx, NS, Passage, Scholar Rock, TG.
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Abbvie, Algernon, Azurrx, Bio-Path, Cerecor, Debiopharm, Gyroscope, Novo Nordisk, Treadwell, Viela.
The U.S. government bought 100 million doses of mRNA-1273 from Moderna Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., with a new award worth up to $1.525 billion, a deal that drops the implied cost per dose below that of several other companies receiving funding through the government program.
Amid all the political positioning, finger-pointing, blame games and mountains of misinformation that have been as much a part of the COVID-19 pandemic as the coronavirus itself, there’s one point of agreement: The pandemic has been a painful experience that everyone needs to learn from so it’s not repeated in the future.