Week of September 19, 2025

The Week at a Glance:

• The Fed’s Rate Cut Fuels Small-Caps: The Fed cut interest rates by 25 bps to counter concerns over a softening labor market, lifting indices broadly including small caps, with the Russell 2000 up 2.2% on the week

• Metabolic Space Stays Hot: Roche’s $3.5B acquisition of 89bio underscores big pharma’s intensifying push beyond obesity into the broader metabolic arena, where comorbidities like MASH represent both large unmet needs and attractive growth opportunities

• Novartis Keeps Busy: Novartis struck a $120.0M upfront, $5.4B milestone licensing deal with Monte Rosa for its molecular glue degraders in immunology and inflammation – its third major transaction this month, following the $1.4B acquisition of Tourmaline Bio last week and a licensing pact with Argo Biopharmaceuticals just two weeks prior

Markets Overview

• The S&P 500, Nasdaq, and the Dow were up 1.2%, 2.2%, and 1.0%, respectively

  • Major indices posted strong gains this week as investors reacted to the Fed’s interest rate cut

The NYSE Pharma Index and the NBI were up 0.1% and 0.9% respectively

Notable changes in share price:

• Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO): Shares climbed 8.7% after Novo presented a sub-analysis of their Phase 3 REDEFINE 1 obesity trial at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, highlighting strong tolerability

• 89Bio (NASDAQ: ETNB): Shares climbed 79.6% following reports that the company will be acquired by Roche in a deal worth up to $3.5B

• Replimune (NASDAQ: REPL): Shares declined 43.6% after Replimune disclosed that its Type A meeting with the FDA, convened to discuss the recent CRL, did not provide clarity on a potential path to accelerated approval

Sources: Pitchbook, Biomedtracker, and CapIQ

Equity Markets

IPO Markets:

No companies completed IPOs last week

One company filed an S-1 last week, including:

• MapLight Therapeutics intends to raise ~$100.0M in capital to advance ML-007C-MA, a fixed-dose combination of an M1/M4 muscarinic agonist, into Phase 2 clinical trials for schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease psychosis

Of 19 companies in the queue, only one intends to raise more than $30.0M in proceeds 

So far in 2025, IPOs have delivered a median gain of 24.1%, with nearly 65% of newly public companies trading above their offer price

Follow-On Offering Markets:

There were 4 follow-on equity offerings last week totaling $56.5M, including:

• Jasper Therapeutics (NASDAQ: JSPR) raised $28.4M to advance preclinical and clinical development of briquilimab, an anti-KIT monoclonal antibody, in mast-cell driven diseases such as  chronic spontaneous urticaria, chronic inducible urticaria, and allergic asthma

PIPE/RDO Markets:

There was limited PIPE/RDO activity, with aggregate amount raised less than $6M

Talk less about the two but more about the aggregate (limited acitivyt in PIPE/RDO)

Licensing

M & A

Venture Financing

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