With 46 initial public offerings in the US by drug developers so far – including recent launches by Kymera, Inhibrx and Harmony – 2020 will easily beat last year’s 50 IPOs. In follow-on offerings and VC deals, newly public Schrodinger raised $346.5m and Tango’s $50m equity financing.

Private Company Edition: The allogeneic cell therapy developer founded by former Juno execs launched in January 2019 without disclosing its initial funding. Other recent venture capital mega-rounds include $192m for Orca, $170m for C4, $118m for Shattuck and $102m for GreenLight.

The arrival of SARS-CoV-2 has focused attention on a potential new way of making vaccines – one that promises to be quicker and cheaper than traditional methods and more reactive to novel virus outbreaks, but also one that remains to be validated.

Steven Powell, chair of the board at Cambridge Cognition, talks about the group’s latest spin-off company, Monument Therapeutics.