ES: Public Company Edition: Fifty biopharma companies launched initial public offerings in the US last year and there have been 52 so far in 2020, including Metacrine, Dyne, Athira and COMPASS.

When the US FDA approved Olumiant (baricitinib) for RA, it insisted on a lower dose because of fears of blood clots. Now that an NIH trial has shown that the product plus Gilead’s Veklury (remdesivir) provided a statistically significant reduction in time to recovery versus remdesivir alone for hospitalized COVID patients, Olumaint may get an emergency use authorization from FDA to treat a condition that itself causes blood clots. That doesn't mean the black box is going away; it's just a reminder that there is as much magic and mystery to medicine sometimes as there is science. 

Private Company Edition: Neogene, Escient, ESCAPE, Resolution and Attralus raised a combined $320m in venture capital rounds. Also, large Recursion round could double the size of its pipeline, Korro Bio raised $91.5m and Flagship launched Generate Biomedicines.

Olumiant (baricitinib) plus Gilead’s Veklury (remdesivir) provided a statistically significant reduction in time to recovery versus remdesivir alone for hospitalized patients in US NIAID’s ACTT-2 clinical trial. 

Brent Saunder’s Vesper Healthcare Acquisition Corp. wants to raise up to $460m in a forthcoming IPO to buy companies in health care and medical market niches including wellness.

The company paid twice Immunomedics’ last closing stock price to access Trodelvy, approved for triple-negative breast cancer with potential in other solid tumors as monotherapy and in combinations.