According to statistics, dealmaking partnerships shrank to 301 deals in 2013, down one-fifth from 2012. However, oncology persists as a dominant area with 84 deals, in which biotech startups cooperates with academic institute focusing on technology platform rather than a single compound.
As data shown, it is the big-ticket deals in oncology, and deal making covers extensively broad spectrum, although top ten records the megadeals and the EP Vantage data focuses on deals around products in Phase 1 to Phase 3.
Deals by business area, 2013(Source: SciBx: Science-Business eXchange)
Commercial returns in Cancer immunotherapy
Since FDA approved Dendreon’s Provenge for treating prostate cancer and Bristol-Myers’s Yervoy for melanoma treatment. Immunotherapy are increasingly seen as a fourth category of oncology treatment, added to surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
In a cancer immunotherapy deal announced in March 2013, Celgene established tie-up with the gene-therapy bluebird bio,. In the US$225 million-plus deal, bluebird will be applying its technology to genetically modify a patient’s own T cells, priming them to target and destroy tumor cells.
In another cancer immunotherapy deal that closed in 2012, Colby Pharmaceutical, a privately owned company based in San Jose, California, acquired the immunotherapy assets of MannKind, including a Phase 1 melanoma vaccine that uses intra–lymph node injection to target cancer antigens directly at T cells.
Insight into academic-private partnerships 2013
Harvard University was one of the most active deal makers without focusing on oncology in 2013 (shown by below table). By contrast, University of Texas System processed 3 deals, belonging entirely to oncology. In the 25 deals listed, 8 deals were engaged in oncology. Additionally, both Johns Hopkins University and KU Leuven broke into the top 5 in 2013. Correspondingly, University College London and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard dropped out of the top 5.
Academic-private partnerships 2013
Source: SciBx: Science-Business eXchange
Reference:
1. Academic-industry partnerships 2013. Nature Biotechnology 2014. doi:10.1038/nbt.2861