US biotech investment doubles

Investment in the beleaguered US biotechnology sector shot up in the second quarter of this year, but analysts say it’s too early to identify a sustainable growth trend.

Biotech funding for the second quarter this year totaled $2.1 billion, a 52% jump in terms of dollars and a 36% increase in deals from the first quarter, according to a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Nearly all of the seven biotechnology areas, among them human biotech and industrial biotech, surveyed exhibited growth in the second quarter with the human biotech segment coming out top.

The news will be a boost to the sector, which has struggled in the face of the global financial crisis to attract the investment its needs to fund its expensive, and long-term, research and development projects.

Tracy Lefteroff, global managing partner of the venture capital practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: “The rise in companies lining up to go public in the Life Sciences space was likely a driver of this strong second quarter rebound. It takes several quarters to establish a clearly sustainable growth trend, but the data looks good so far."

Lefteroff added: “At a time when a number of drugs have been taken off the market and blockbuster patents are expiring, venture capitalists are putting money into new drug development. The demand for innovative products is not expected to stop."

Investment in early stage development saw a jump of 83% in the second quarter, rising to $751 million, but there was a decline in the number of later stage deals. These fell to 44 deals in the second quarter 2010, a 6% decline from the prior quarter and a 17% drop when compared to the second quarter of 2009.

Ben Adams