Week of May 15, 2026


The Week at a Glance:

  • FDA Drama with Makary’s Departure: FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned amid reported White House disagreements over flavored e-cigarette approvals, triggering a broader FDA leadership shake-up that included the departure of CDER’s acting director

  • The Second Largest Biotech Private Funding Round Ever: Isomorphic Labs, a DeepMind spin-off focused on AI-driven drug discovery, raised $2.1B in the second-largest biotech funding round to date, trailing only Altos Labs, another AI-enabled drug discovery company that raised $3B in 2022

  • Big Pharma Turning to China: BMS entered a transaction with Hengrui worth up to $15.2B for 13 programs, including eight oncology or immunology assets and five additional programs to be jointly discovered 

     


Markets Overview

The S&P 500 was up 0.1%, while the Nasdaq and Dow were down 0.1% and 0.2%, respectively, over the last week

  • Although equity markets were largely flat for the week, Treasuries sold off as bond investors grew increasingly concerned about inflationary pressures stemming from rising energy prices

The NYSE Pharma Index was up 2.0%, while the NBI was down 1.7% over the last week

Notable changes in share price:

  • Regenxbio (NASDAQ: RGNX): Shares fell 46.6% after the Company reported data from its DMD gene therapy program that revealed serious side effects, making it yet another DMD gene therapy to face safety challenges

 

Sources: Pitchbook, Biomedtracker, and CapIQ


Equity Markets

IPO

There were no new S-1s filed last week.

IPOs priced in 2025 and 2026 have generated a median and average return of 6.4% and 18.3% YTD, respectively.

After-Market Performance by Stage

  • Clinical-stage after-market performance (N=18): 46.3% (average), 31.5% (median)

  • Commercial-stage after-market performance (N=24): (4.4%) (average), (6.5%) (median)

After-Market Performance by Sector

  • Biopharma (N=18): 46.3% (average), 31.5% (median)

  • MedTech (N=23): (10.6%) (average), (12.8%) (median)

Source: CapIQ

Follow On

There were two follow-on equity offerings totaling $11.5M last week

Source: Biomedtracker

PIPE/RDO Markets:

There were five PIPEs/RDOs last week raising an aggregate of $96.0M

  • Whitehawk Therapeutics (NASDAQ: WHWK) announced an $87.5M PIPE financing to support working capital and general corporate purposes, including advancement of its antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) pipeline and related development activities, with proceeds expected to extend the Company’s cash runway into 2H 2028


Licensing

Sources: Pitchbook, Biomedtracker, and CapIQ

Sources: Pitchbook, Biomedtracker, and CapIQ


M & A


Venture Financing

Sources: Pitchbook, Biomedtracker, and CapIQ


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A MAP to the Future of Targeted Oncology

The latest in our series of healthcare analyst reports focuses on the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway, one of the most commonly perturbed signaling pathways in human cancer. Flowing from RAS to RAF to MEK to EKR, the pathway is a master regulator of cell growth and survival. Therefore, the amplification of proteins or mutation of key signaling domains are a common hallmark of cancer.

 

HEALTHCARE MARKET REPORTS ARCHIVE

 

GREG BENNING
Partner, Managing Director, Head of Investment Banking

VASILIOS KOFITSAS
Partner, Managing Director, Investment Banking

JOHN ROGERS
Analyst, Investment Banking

CRYSTAL HSU
Director, Investment Banking

 

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