Germany’s BioNTech raises $325m to spur research on cancer

Bloomberg

The German cancer-treatment researcher BioNTech raised $325 million from investors, one of the largest financing rounds ever by a European biotechnology company.
The second-round haul brings closely held BioNTech’s total fundraising to more than $1.4 billion, according to Sean Marett, the company’s chief business officer. The figure is high even by standards in the US, where the valuations of early-stage drug companies tend to dwarf those of their European counterparts.
BioNTech is researching how to make personalised cancer therapies, an area of oncology research that has attracted attention from large pharmaceutical companies and investors alike in recent years. Pfizer Inc and Sanofi, two of the world’s biggest drugmakers, have development deals with BioNTech.
Advances in treatments that use the body’s own immune system to attack tumors
have reignited hopes that researchers will be able to create therapies tailored to individual patients.
Mainz-based BioNTech wouldn’t disclose its valuation or when it might seek an initial public offering, which would be a logical next step for a biotechnology company of its size. In February, Bloomberg reported that it was weighing an IPO that would give the company a value of $5 billion.
Around the world, promising biotech companies have raised ever-larger funding rounds and gone public at a frenzied pace not seen
since 2000.
Seattle-based firm Adaptive Biotechnologies saw its shares more than double in value in their first day of trading in late June, making it the most successful debut of any company this year.