Pembrolizumab

Good morning and rabbit rabbit as we begin the month of March. It was another busy week in the world of biopharma so let’s jump straight into the headlines. John Carroll examined the last year in biotech investing, putting together his list of the top 100 VCs. There are some familiar names at the top and some handy-dandy charts that help take a snapshot of the industry. Our DC team was also firing on all cylinders again this week, writing about the cancellation of a vaccine advisory meeting for flu shots and Pfizer hiring a former top FDA official. Senior correspondent Andrew Dunn also examined how the tenure of Bayer CEO Bill Anderson has gone so far since he joined the company in 2023. There’s likely a long road ahead, but perhaps Bayer has something in common with skateboarding? Find out below. Elsewhere in the industry, Pfizer said it would start testing combinations of the ADCs it got from Seagen with Summit’s lead drug, and Roger Perlmutter returned to the forefront of biopharma with another fundraise for Eikon — though it represents a down round from its last raise. — Max Gelman A look at the top 100 biotech investors 💯 Founding editor John Carroll took an in-depth look at the biggest names investing in biotech these days, with help from DealForma’s Chris Dokomajilar. As John describes it, the list is “bird’s-eye view of virtually the entire who’s-who in venture investing.” Atop the list is a name that won’t surprise many: RA Capital Management. The firm is a consistent presence in the life sciences space, and it participated in nearly 50 fundraising rounds last year. The top five were rounded out by Novo Holdings/Novo Nordisk Foundation, GV (Google Ventures), Orbimed and Qiming Venture Partners. For the first time since 2021, venture investing rose year over year. Last year saw more than 2,600 investment firms participate in nearly 1,200 life sciences venture rounds, putting a total of $49.3 billion into the space after $40.1 billion was invested in 2023. More than half of last year’s total — $27.3 billion — was directed toward biopharma therapeutics and platforms, up from $22.9 billion in 2023. Another big takeaway? Rounds got bigger, but firms invested primarily in fewer and later fundraises. Even though there was more cash flowing, the total number of rounds fell slightly. In the biopharma space, this figure dropped from 468 in 2023, to 434 last year. At the same time, companies are also staying private longer: the investment in Phase 3 biopharma more than doubled from 2023 to 2024. John also hosted a webinar discussing the list with partners at Andreessen Horowitz, Orbimed, RA Capital and ARCH. You can watch the event on demand here . FDA vaccine meeting is canceled, and some staff return 💉 A meeting of the FDA’s advisors to select flu strains for next fall’s vaccines has been canceled, Endpoints News’ Max Bayer reported this week . The session was scheduled to take place on March 13. While it wasn’t immediately clear if HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had any role in the cancellation, his ascension has raised concerns about how US policy on vaccinations could be affected. What does that mean for flu season? The panel typically meets at the start of the year to give drugmakers time to ramp up production of tens of millions of vaccine doses. A spokesperson for HHS told Endpoints that the FDA “will make public its recommendations to manufacturers in time for updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season.” 🗣️ What are pharma execs saying about the Trump transition? Few details have emerged from a closed-door White House meeting with pharma CEOs. Meanwhile, executives are sticking mostly to Trump-friendly topics in their public comments, Endpoints’ Andrew Dunn wrote this week in a Post-Hoc piece. Meanwhile, Pfizer hired former CDER director Patrizia Cavazzoni as its new chief medical officer. Cavazzoni, who oversaw drug regulation under the Biden administration, will be in charge of Pfizer’s “regulatory, pharmacovigilance, safety, epidemiology, and medical information and evidence generation,” according to an internal memo. And some staffers returned to the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health after being laid off. Industry-funded medical device reviewers were among those returning, Zachary Brennan reported on Monday. HHS, FDA and CDRH did not immediately respond to requests for comment on how many employees were reinstated or why they were initially laid off. Can Bill Anderson save Bayer? 🐻 CEO Bill Anderson is bringing a new work philosophy to Bayer. Anderson left Roche in 2023, and will celebrate his two-year anniversary as CEO of Bayer in June. He sat down with Endpoints’ Andrew Dunn to talk about his roadmap for Bayer’s turnaround. And while the company still has a long road ahead, fourth-quarter earnings next week should provide a glimpse of how Anderson’s plan is going. What do Bayer and a skateboard injury have in common? Last year, Anderson compared the company to his leg after a 2021 skateboarding accident: “badly broken in four places.” Bayer’s “four breaks” were lapsing patents on key drugs without a sufficient pipeline, high debt, litigation fallout, and a bureaucracy preventing people from doing their best work, he said. Since then, Anderson said Bayer has made “good progress,” and implemented a new structure that eliminates layers of management and leaves smaller teams with more decision-making power. ​​“A great molecule trumps everything,” Anderson said, highlighting that good drugs lead the way. “The molecule makes the franchise, not the other way around.” Bayer has touted five positive Phase 3 readouts in 2024 for drugs including the chronic kidney disease therapy Kerendia, the prostate cancer treatment Nubeqa, and an experimental compound for menopause called elinzanetant. Pfizer wants a piece of Keytruda’s pie 🥧 Pfizer has faced a lot of pressure in recent months, seeing an activist investor join, spinning out multiple businesses and reeling from a few M&A mishaps. But thanks to its acquisition of Seagen, it is attempting to help Summit Therapeutics’ quest to dethrone Merck’s Keytruda as the immunotherapy of choice: Pfizer and Summit said this week they’re going to test Seagen’s vedotin-based ADCs in combination with Summit’s ivonescimab , a PD-1xVEGF bispecific partnered with Akeso. Pfizer and Summit did not disclose terms of the deal, and they didn’t say whether they’d be pitting the combinations directly against Keytruda in clinical trials. But oncology has been a big goal for Pfizer since it bought Seagen, promoting its oncology head to chief scientific officer last fall. Summit CEO Bob Duggan also said Pfizer won’t be the only partner it enlists to develop other potential combos. Eikon Therapeutics raises $351M Series D 💰 Eikon Therapeutics raised a new round as its lead drug enters late-stage testing. The candidate, a TLR7/8 co-agonist called EIK1001, just started a Phase 3 trial for skin cancer. The financing round is the biotech industry’s second largest raise in 2025, behind Verdiva Bio’s $411 million launch in January. A sign of the times: Eikon and its investors agreed to cut the company’s valuation from its 2023 round “to reflect this environment,” CEO Roger Perlmutter told Endpoints. Perlmutter said he is “confident” Eikon will eventually go public, adding that “there is room for special companies to go public, and we are a special company.” DON’T MISS