Mi­rador Ther­a­peu­tics, which is de­vel­op­ing pre­ci­sion med­i­cines for im­mune dis­eases, has raised a $250 mil­lion se­ries B fi­nanc­ing and is con­sid­er­ing an IPO lat­er this year, the com­pa­ny told End­points News ex­clu­sive­ly.

The San Diego-based start­up has kept a low pro­file since launch­ing with an eye-pop­ping $400 mil­lion al­most two years ago, and has said lit­tle about how it’s us­ing all of its mon­ey — un­til now. In an hour­long in­ter­view, CEO Mark McKen­na pulled back the cur­tain on Mi­rador’s strat­e­gy and its rapid clin­i­cal progress.

McKen­na said Mi­rador is al­ready work­ing on treat­ments for Crohn’s dis­ease, id­io­path­ic pul­monary fi­bro­sis, rheuma­toid arthri­tis and ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis. At least three pro­grams —McKen­na wouldn’t give an ex­act num­ber — be­gan clin­i­cal stud­ies last year, and he ex­pects to have at least 10 da­ta read­outs by the end of 2027.

Biotech is go­ing to San Fran­cis­co. And cash is go­ing to biotech.

Dur­ing the first full week of Jan­u­ary, pri­vate biotechs raised at least $2.29 bil­lion in new cap­i­tal, ac­cord­ing to an End­points News tal­ly. That like­ly makes it one of the biggest weeks of new mon­ey for the in­dus­try in years.

Ten biotechs raised $100 mil­lion-plus megarounds, with the largest go­ing to can­cer biotech Para­bilis Med­i­cines in a $305 mil­lion Se­ries F.

Mean­while, the in­dus­try had the "busiest start ever" for pub­lic biotech fundrais­ing, ac­cord­ing to Leerink Part­ners se­nior man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jack Ban­nis­ter.

Fol­low-on of­fer­ings from Ar­row­head, Alu­mis and oth­ers reeled in $2.3 bil­lion, and Ak­tis On­col­o­gy raised $318 mil­lion in the year's first IPO. That $2.6 bil­lion to­tal sur­pass­es the pre­vi­ous high of $2.4 bil­lion in the first week of 2021, Ban­nis­ter wrote in a Fri­day morn­ing note. In ad­di­tion, rich­ly-rund­ed Eikon Ther­a­peu­tics filed for its own IPO on Fri­day, as did hair growth biotech Ve­r­a­der­mics, in what is like­ly to be a bell­wether.

This feels like a tru­ly piv­otal year for the in­dus­try, for the mar­kets and for Wash­ing­ton. It’s been one of the biggest pe­ri­ods of change since I start­ed at End­points News three-plus years ago. So I want­ed to take stock of where we are head­ing in­to 2026. There’s plen­ty that’s not in here — in­cred­i­ble things are hap­pen­ing across sci­ence and dis­cov­ery that are too nu­mer­ous to men­tion.

But these six ques­tions are what I'm think­ing about head­ing in­to the JP Mor­gan con­fer­ence this year...

Things feel good, but it’s still ear­ly. This biotech ral­ly is young — the XBI on­ly start­ed its move in April. We still haven’t seen IPOs read­l­ly kick in (though Eikon and Ve­r­a­der­mics just filed for of­fer­ings). And there are huge macro risks out in Wash­ing­ton (take your pick), around the globe (Chi­na, glob­al un­rest) and in the mar­kets (mon­e­tary pol­i­cy, state cap­i­tal­ism).

Ve­r­a­der­mics, a biotech work­ing on an oral ver­sion of the hair growth drug Ro­gaine, has filed for an ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing.

The Con­necti­cut start­up un­veiled its IPO plans on Fri­day evening, and plans to list on the New York Stock Ex­change. It would trade un­der the tick­er MANE in a nod to what it hopes to re­store in pa­tients: thick, longer hair.

Three months ago, Ve­r­a­der­mics un­veiled a $150 mil­lion Se­ries C to fund Phase 3 tri­als of VD­PHL01, an oral, ex­tend­ed-re­lease ver­sion of mi­nox­i­dil, the gener­ic form of the pop­u­lar top­i­cal hair growth drug Ro­gaine.

Hair loss is an area of grow­ing in­ter­est for biotechs: Pelage Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals an­nounced a $120 mil­lion Se­ries B the same week as Ve­r­a­der­mic­s' Se­ries C.

Genen­tech's shift from one of the largest drug ben­e­fit plans to a pri­vate­ly-held en­ti­ty is ex­pect­ed to save the Roche sub­sidiary tens of mil­lions of dol­lars, the com­pa­ny's CEO said.

Genen­tech CEO Ash­ley Ma­g­a­rgee ex­clu­sive­ly told End­points News that the move could save about $70 mil­lion through 2028. Genen­tech is at least the sec­ond large phar­ma to sign on­to Right­way, a phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit start­up found­ed in 2017.

Ma­g­a­rgee de­clined to spec­i­fy which phar­ma­cy ben­e­fit man­ag­er Genen­tech left, say­ing on­ly it was one of the three largest — Op­tum Rx, CVS Care­mark or Ex­press Scripts. A Genen­tech spokesper­son said the com­pa­ny signed a three-and-a-half-year con­tract with Right­way, which be­gan in mid-2025. The switch ap­plies to rough­ly 25,000 em­ploy­ees span­ning both Genen­tech and Roche Di­ag­nos­tics.