Vienna-based Hookipa Biotech has raised almost $60 million in an oversubscribed Series C funding. The investment will help the clinical stage company, which specializes in immunotherapy treatments for cancer and infectious diseases, bring two products to Phase I and II testing.
The deal is the latest in a record-breaking year for global biotech fundraising. VC investment in the sector has smashed through the $10 billion mark in 2017, according to the PitchBook Platform. This compares with $7.4 billion and $7 billion in 2015 and 2016, respectively, even though deal count has declined slightly over last year.
Global VC deals in biotech
Capital expenditure has grown across most regions of the world, with the vast majority of the money spent in the US. Nine of the top 10 biotech VC investments this year, for instance, were for US-based companies. This was led by the mammoth $1.2 billion raised by Grail, a startup looking to create a blood test for screening cancer.
In Europe, capital invested in biotech has grown from around $882 million last year to $1.2 billion in 2017. The continent was also home to the year's fifth-largest investment, a $200 million round raised in October by Switzerland's ADC Therapeutics, which is one of Europe's most valuable startups.
