2012 Financing Recap: Cell Therapy and Cell-Based Regenerative Medicine Companies

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In October we posted a teaser saying that we had at that time tracked the infusion of over $1 billion dollars into cell therapy and cell-based regenerative medicine companies in 2012.  We promised details.  Here they are:

For the first half of the year, see our post "Monthly recap of funds raised by cell therapy & regenerative medicine companies" dated July 31 and updated August 8.

Since that post, we back-filled the following deals which we missed earlier:

• In February, Stemgent raised $6.3M from eight private investors
• In April, BioRestorative Therapies raised $2.1M from undisclosed private parties
• In July, Immusoft received a $300,000 grant from NIH-SITR.

August saw the following financings:

• Cell Cure Neurosciences was awarded $1.3M from Israel's Office of the Chief Scientist
• Stemgent collected another $11.3M from eight private backers
• Neuralstem brought in $2.76M in a public offering
• Fate Therapeutics received $9.2M from undisclosed investors

September was a busy month with the following deals and grants:

• Cellerant benefits from a further BARDA grant tranche with the potential to hit upwards of $36.4M
• StemCells Inc saw the second of its CIRM-funded boats come in to the tune of $20M
• Argos Therapeutics collected $16M from 24 different unnamed investors
• Neuralstem succeeded in bringing in another $7M in a direct public offering
• Pluristem rode its well-orchestrated fame to a $34M underwritten public offering
• Advanced Cell Technology brought in $35M via ATM
• Cellerant collected $2.09M from private investors
• Cytori was awarded a BARDA grant with potential to hit up to $106M
• Vital Therapies closed the first $16M from a multistage commitment to invest $76M by existing private investors. The investment is intended to fund three  Phase III trials of the company’s bioartificial liver therapy, ELAD, for two types of acute liver failure. One trial in the US (not yet recruiting) in acute alcoholic hepatitis involving 200 patients; the other two trial in EU and Australia/New Zealand for acute alcoholic hepatitis patients who fail steroid therapy and in subjects with fulminant hepatic failure
• Avita Media rounded out the month with a modest $880,000 grant from AFIRM

So after seeing $172M come into the sector in Quarter One and $252M in Quarter Two, the Third Quarter saw companies in the sector glean commitments of up to $408M from various sources. 

The Fourth Quarter saw $288M infused into the sector broken down as follows:

    October

• Capricor gleaned a $19.8M from CIRM
• China Cord Blood Corp secrured $50M in a convertible note financing from Golden Meditech Holding Limited
• Cellerant kept the grant machine rolling with a $1.7M phase 1 SBIR grant from NCI
• Tengion secured $15M in senior secured convertible notes from Celgene Corporation, RA Capital Management,  Deerfield Management Company, Bay City Capital and HealthCap
• Viacyte saw a $10M grant from CIRM
• Massachusetts-based Bluebird Bio finagled $9.36M from California's CIRM
• Fibrocell Sciences did a $45M PIPE
• Avita Medical gleaned $10M from a secondary public offering

    November

• Athersys closed a $23M secondary offering priced at $1.00
• Tissue Regeneration Therapeutics eked out a $100,000 grant from Ontario Genomics Intitute
• Quy Biosciences (formerly MedCell) raised $2.7M in a private placement
• Kiadis Pharma managed a $12.8M financing round lead by LSP (Life Sciences Partners) and supported by a large investment from DFJ-Esprit. Other investors included Alta Partners, Quest for Growth and NOM.  The round will be used to do a late-stage phase 2 trial which they hope will position them for a solid pivotal with partner, Hospira.
• NeoStem received a $1.2M grant from NIH
• French biotech, TxCell raised €12.4M from existing shareholders to support an internationa ph 2b trial of Ovasave for the treatment of Crohn’s disease in patients who are refractory to current treatments.
• In a Biotech Showcase presentation, Adaptimmune COO reported they were given 9.6M British Pounds by 'high-net-worth investors' in November to move forward their clinical pipeline

    December

• Northwest Biotherapeutics brought in $13.8M in a secondary public offering
• Organovo secured $7.7M in a tender offer to warrant holders
• Cytori closed a $23M secondary public offering (including the shoe)

Unfortunately neither Cell Therapy Group, nor any of our industry organizations, have any comprehensive financing data from year's past to know for certain whether broaching this $1,000,000,000 threshold is indeed a first-ever accomplishment.  We tracked $390M of investment into the sector in 2008 and then did not track this data for 2009-11 inclusive.

Based on everything we know, we believe this is almost certainly the first time the sector has raised over one billion dollars. 

Hope that helps.

--Lee

SBIR Funding - Should it be open to VCs?

I don't have much time to give you an extensive blog about the issue but I did want to bring this to your attention. Here's the nutshell.

The NIH's SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research Program) funding mechanism has been an important one for small businesses who are not big/mature/saavy/desperate-enough to land venture capital funding, have very limited access to other NIH funding, and have tapped out the available angel/seed/friends_n_family resources at their disposal.

Since 2003, one of the hallmarks of the rather small SBIR funding pot ($2.2 billion a year) has been that it was not available to companies that are majority-backed by venture capital. Before 2003, venture-backed firms were allowed to participate in the SBIR program.

The program is scheduled to expire next month and so is up for renewal. The House committee responsible for the program has proposed that the VC-restriction be removed thus re-opening the program to a whole slew of companies previously ineligible. The House just passed this bill. A senate version of the bill tries to reach a compromise by limiting the amount available to venture-backed firms.

Whatever your opinion on the judiciousness of this move, there is no doubt that opening up eligibility to the program will dilute the available funding.

Here is a link to yesterday's article on the subject in the Washington Post.

Fellow blogger Steven S. Clark (BioScience Biz) has a just posted his most recent update and opinion on the matter that is well worth the read.