By John Carroll, Editor & Founder - The numbers aren’t all bad in biotech. But you’d be forgiven if you thought they were. And you’d be in good company. Once again, Chris Dokomajilar at DealForma has been checking the data for us on what Q2 and the first half indicate for the rest of 2025. Once again, Chris Dokomajilar at DealForma has been checking the data for us on what Q2 and the first half indicate for the rest of 2025.
Significantly, dealmaking is holding up, particularly for prime late-stage drugs, as M&A popped a bit in the first half of this year and licensing numbers edged up in biotech. But once you look past dealmaking, it’s a question of just how much the numbers have eroded from last year — or last quarter.
Venture investing has cratered. The IPO party, over for years now, has gone comatose. PIPEs and follow-ons are posting mixed results.
One reason dealmaking is a lone bright spot is that more big pharma companies have been following what is now a well-beaten path to China for new licensing agreements. If you need to be competitive against a target, this is one route that seems to offer plenty of opportunities to catch up, or at least not lag too far behind.
And for Q2, Dokomajilar says, China dealmaking is still riding high. “Thirty-eight percent of big pharma’s large in-licensing deals were from Chinese biopharmas this year so far; (accounting for) twenty-seven percent of upfront dollars paid,” he writes.
That isn’t likely to make any of the US biotech execs cheerful as more big deals migrate to Asia.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this in 2025. Hopes that softening inflation pressures would trigger a much lower interest rate and a better road ahead on the public market were instead met with tariff uncertainty, concerns about a most favored nation pricing proposal, and turmoil in the top ranks of the FDA.
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