The publication of this study marks the fourth consecutive year in which we have examined the prevailing trends in the public “synthetic royalty” and drug development financings markets. Over the course of the seven-year period now encompassed by this report, companies have continued to turn to these financing structures to meet the ever-increasing costs for research and development of new drugs, and financing providers have continued to refine the terms on offer.

Consistent with the prior year, larger public biotech companies continued to turn to these structures in 2025, with a slight uptick in number of deals, and highlighted by an up to $1.25 billion financing in the middle of the year.

In our review, we have seen the market coalesce the past few years around a minimum level of bankruptcy protection in the form of security interests over intellectual property and other product assets, though one investor demonstrated a willingness to be unsecured in 2025 and other elements of these transactions remain very much open to customization. Additionally, no deals in 2025 were funded with respect to products that had not yet completed Phase III trials.

In the following pages, we present our updated study, which covers the period from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2025, for transactions involving at least $25 million entered into by public biotech companies.

Although commercially sensitive information was redacted from some publicly filed documents, sufficient information was available to provide a good sense of market terms.