“Pharmaceutical companies are tuning down their internal R&D,’’ said Gerngross, an engineering professor at Dartmouth College, who has booked business from Pfizer Inc., Merck & Co., Novartis AG, and Weston-based Biogen Idec Inc., and other drug makers. “That’s very positive for companies like ours.’’
Adimab, of Lebanon, N.H., was one of hundreds of smaller biotechnology and medical device firms seeking to find research partners, strike collaborations, raise money, buy other companies, or be acquired themselves in the nonstop deal making that surrounded the annual conference. After several sluggish years, life sciences deal making has begun to rebound, with investors and companies increasingly turning to partnerships to share the costs and risks of bringing expensive new therapies to market.
The increasing activity, of course, is good news for Massachusetts and its large life sciences industry. Investments in health care and life sciences accounted for more than half of the $959 million in venture capital funding in Massachusetts during last year’s fourth quarter, according to New York venture capital database CB Insights. Early-stage companies, which have found it especially hard to secure financing in recent years, accounted for 42 percent of the deals.
“It’s like speed dating,’’ said George Scangos, chief executive of Biogen Idec. “Everyone’s more open [to deals] because everyone’s under pressure to bolster their revenue and expand [the new products in] their pipelines.’’
The industry, meanwhile, is moving beyond traditional funding and partnership deals, exploring new collaboration models. For example, Polaris Venture Partners, the Waltham firm investing in Adimab and more than 40 other life sciences companies, last week unveiled an alliance with Janssen Pharmaceuticals, an arm of health care giant Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, N.J.
