Hot topic: Why resilience matters

Resilience has become something of a buzzword in recent years – a cliché, even. The regular peaks and troughs that the biotech industry experiences lead many to prescribe ‘resilience’ as a cure-all for tough times.

Being resilient is easier said than done when investors don’t seem interested, when politics are so unstable, when you hear the climate “just isn’t right” for deals.

Being resilient is particularly hard when the end of the cash runway is rushing up at a terrifying rate, yet the wheels are still firmly attached to the ground.

Still, that doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable.

Recently, we saw just how important being resilient can be with Abivax, a small, Paris-based, NASDAQ-listed biotech developing treatments for inflammatory bowel disease.

Over the past six years it has kept itself going with successive raises – including its 2023 IPO – each time buying it a bit more runway. The firm must have felt a little like Road Runner paving a highway afresh while running at speed, just to keep going.

But all that effort has finally paid off. Late last month, Abivax announced outstanding results from two Phase 3 trials of its drug obefazimod as a treatment for moderate to severe ulcerative colitis.

The company saw its share price rocket by more than 500%. Abivax’s composure has been rewarded handsomely: days after the Phase 3 trial results were released, it was able to bring in a cool $747.5 million in an upsized public offering.

Obefazimod’s unique mode of action sets it apart from its peers, and with follow-up data expected in Q2 2026, the story is definitely one to follow.

Abivax came perilously close to failing. “In September 2022, this company was three hours from bankruptcy,”  CEO Marc de Garidel told Kevin Grogan of Scrip in a recent interview.

What can we learn from Abivax? That success isn’t linear, or available as a downloadable, plug-in blueprint.

And that in an industry in which failure is the norm, those with the confidence to hold their nerve and execute under an array of pressures – many of which executives have little or no control over – stand more chance of succeeding.