Public Company Edition: Merging with a special purpose acquisition corporation may be an attractive alternative to an initial public offering, but February’s vigorous IPO pace includes seven recent offerings that raised $480.8m in the US. Also, Cassava raised $200m and KalVista brought in $222.5m.

IPO Edition: Sana leads the group with a $587.5m initial public offering, while Immunocore and Bolt follow with $200m-plus IPOs. The 10 newly public companies generated a 43.3% average return on 8 Feb.

Building on research by Dana-Farber professor Wayne Marasco, the partners are backing a bispecific approach to CAR-Ts in solid tumors. Seelos licenses a Parkinson’s gene therapy candidate from Duke.

Public Company Edition: IPO performance has been mixed in 2019, but May has been the busiest month this year. Also, Insmed leads recent follow-on offerings and Dynavax restructures.