Edgewise IPO, Inscripta round leads Colorado bioscience’s largest venture funding quarter on record

DENVER — The Colorado Bioscience Association said the state’s biotech industry set a record for new venture funding in the first quarter of 2021, with a lion’s share of those dollars coming from Boulder-area companies.

The trade association said Tuesday that biotech companies in the state raised $704 million in the last quarter. That figure is more than half of the $1.2 billion in venture funding issued in the entirety of 2020 and well on its way toward eclipsing the $850 million or so issued in 2019.

Those annual figures do not include Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) acquiring Array Biopharma for $11.4 billion in 2019 or Invitae Corp. (NYSE: NVTA) acquiring ArcherDX Inc. in a deal worth up to $1.4 billion last year.

Boulder-area biotech companies generated much of the state’s venture funding in the period. Edgewise Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: EWTX) raised $202.4 million in late March after confidentially filing for an initial public offering to fund its muscular dystrophy drug candidates through clinical trials, and genomics-editing platform developer Inscripta Inc. raised $150 million in its Series E.

The quarterly number doesn’t include SomaLogic Inc., which said at the end of the quarter that it would go public via merger with a special purpose acquisition company this year. That deal would add $651 million to the company’s books.

The CBSA also said the National Institutes of Health issued more than 200 research grants and a total of $92 million to Colorado startups in the period.

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