June BIO eNewsletter

Finding the Exit

Promising biotechs can still reward their employees and investors in these challenging times, but they’ll have to be more flexible and creative.

By Eric Wahlgren

Biotech IPOs lately are rarer than albino dolphins—one of those was spotted in the Gulf of Mexico just a few days ago. No one has seen a biotech IPO on a U.S. exchange since Bioheart went public on February 19, 2008 some 471 days ago (as of June 4, 2009), nearing the previous record for biotech IPO droughts of 531 days set in the early 1990s, according to the investment bank Jefferies. No doubt about it, the once preferred biotech exit pathway—from good idea, to venture capital investment, to public market debut—is closed until further notice. What’s more, today there are also far more companies looking for partners or buyers than there are actual suitors, experts say. Read the full story here.

Evolve or Die

How the financial crisis is forcing biotech to change its traditional business models.

By Peter Winter

Over the years, biotechnology companies have adopted a variety of different business models to be able to operate and grow, even under often challenging global macroeconomic conditions. The question today is, can they adapt once again to an unfriendly capital environment that is seen as their greatest threat to survival yet? In its 2009 Beyond Borders annual report on the biotechnology industry, Ernst & Young warns that the global financial crisis threatens to render the business models that have driven the sector to date unsustainable. Read the full story here.

A Bridge to Cross the Chasm

An innovative funding program at the National Cancer Institute could prove a model for other National Institutes of Health divisions to follow.

By Daniel S. Levine

The National Cancer Institute is known for funding innovative research, but one of the Bethesda, Maryland center’s most recent breakthroughs isn’t a drug or new imaging agent. Instead, the latest burst of creative thinking has led to a new financing strategy to enable a host of new treatments. The initiative involves providing funding to help companies avoid the so-called valley of death. That’s the a gap in between the early-stage financing that the National Institutes of Health divisions such as the NCI typically provide for basic research, and the later-stage capital that investors supply when promising technologies are sufficiently developed. Read the full story here.