While many of his peers elbowed each other to leap into oncology, James Xue decided to focus on rare diseases such as Hunter’s Syndrome. Now, 10 years after founding CANbridge, the CEO sat down for an audio interview with Scrip to offer his views on a flurry of key issues impacting orphan drug development in potentially the world's largest pharma market.

Public Company Edition: The last biopharma IPO in the US was on 17 February and none have been scheduled, so far, for March. Also, another SPAC merger is called off, Travere sells $275m worth of notes and Xeris secures $150m in new debt, while Ovid, Passage Bio and others are cutting jobs. 

In a rare disease indication, clinical trial efficacy in Phase III should be the ticket to successful sales. But safety issues warrant careful consideration.

Public Company Edition: This year is just six initial public offerings away from matching 2020’s record-breaking total of 86 biopharma IPOs in the US. Also, Idorsia raised $662.5m through the sale of convertible bonds and Cytokinetics closed a $316.3m follow-on offering.