Venture cash gets even more concentrated

In terms of venture cash, living up to last year was always going to be a hard task. The latest figures indicate that 2019 will fall well short of 2018, but the grand total brought in by young drug developers should still look healthy compared with the years before that.
However, this headline number masks a potentially worrying trend: the number of rounds continues to fall, and reached a five-year low in the third quarter of 2019. This concentration of more wealth into fewer hands looks like bad news for start-ups and, perhaps, the biopharma ecosystem as a whole.
This analysis includes only developers of human therapeutics, excluding sectors such as medtech or diagnostics. But it echoes a trend seen in medtech for some time: a widening gap between the haves and have-nots, which has led to a shrinking pool of M&A targets.
While some might argue that more selective venture funding could strengthen the biopharma talent pool by weeding out weaker players from the start, it is unclear whether this is indeed the case – or whether funnelling cash towards the hottest sectors means valid opportunities in less fashionable fields are missed.
A look at the biggest fundraisers in the third quarter neatly illustrates how one sector, oncology, is gobbling up a massive share of the cash: six of the top 10 rounds involved cancer companies.
The list was headed up by the German mRNA and cell therapy specialist Biontech, which brought in a whopping $325m in July; the group is preparing to float this week in an IPO that could raise the company a further $250m and give it $4.5bn valuation.

Top 10 VC rounds of Q3 2019
Company	Investment ($m)	Round	Location	Specialism
Biontech	325	Series B	Germany	Oncology
D&D Pharmatech	137	Series B	S Korea/US	CNS/fibrosis
AM-Pharma	133	Series F	Netherlands	Kidney disease
Lepu Biotechnology	130	Series A	China	Oncology
Achilles Therapeutics	127	Series B	UK	Oncology
Recursion Pharmaceuticals	121	Series C	US	AI drug discovery
Nkarta Therapeutics	114	Series B	US	Oncology
Passage Bio	110	Series B	US	Rare CNS diseases
Kronos Bio	105	Series A	US	Oncology
IGM Biosciences	102	Series C	US	Oncology
Source: EvaluatePharma.

Another of the third quarter’s big VC winners, IGM Biosciences, has already managed to go public. The company has just taken its first candidate, an anti-CD20 bispecific antibody, into the clinic.
And investors are not avoiding high-risk, early-stage companies, at least not those in the right areas. The preclinical groups Nkarta Therapeutics and Kronos Bio are looking at natural killer cells and historically “undruggable” cancer targets respectively. And one of only two CNS players to make the top 10, the gene therapy specialist Passage Bio, is yet to enter the clinic.
While the current set-up benefits the few rather than the many, the headline figures in the third quarter could have been worse for start-ups: after two consecutive quarters of falling cash there had been fears that the slump might continue (Venture investing dips again for biopharma, July 11, 2019).
Instead, it looks like 2019 will follow the pattern – if the outlier of 2018 is excluded – of venture activity dipping mid-year and rising again in the latter half.
The bonanza seen last year was probably not sustainable. But, if the downward trend continues, groups in neglected areas could find it even harder to raise cash. It will be a while until the ramifications of this shift become clear.

Annual biopharma venture investments
Date	Investment ($bn)	Financing count	Avg per financing ($m)	No. of rounds ≥$50m	No. of rounds ≥$100m
9M 2019	10.2	278	38.3	84	26
2018	17.3	415	44.1	129	38
2017	12.1	442	29.9	72	16
2016	9.7	442	23.4	48	13
2015	11.0	514	22.5	56	13
Source: EvaluatePharma.

https://www.evaluate.com/vantage/articles/data-insights/venture-financing/venture-cash-gets-even-more-concentrated