Af­ter a busy week last week when 10 biotechs went pub­lic, the in­dus­try con­tin­ues to see a steady stream of com­pa­nies mak­ing their de­buts.

With Ada­gene pric­ing ear­li­er this week and two more biotechs join­ing them late Thurs­day in­to ear­ly Fri­day, there have now been 16 com­pa­nies to IPO so far in 2021. The to­tal com­bined raise is rapid­ly ris­ing and ap­proach­ing $3 bil­lion al­ready — biotechs have pulled in rough­ly $2.86 bil­lion thus far.

That growth has large­ly been dri­ven by Sana’s mega IPO, which ac­counts for about one-fourth of the over­all sum. But five oth­er biotechs have al­so raised more than $200 mil­lion each: Gra­cell, Cul­li­nan, Bolt, Im­muno­core and Vor.

Here’s a run­down of the two com­pa­nies that priced af­ter mar­ket close Thurs­day af­ter­noon, as well as an­oth­er biotech that filed its S-1 on Thurs­day night.

Nex­Im­mune de­buts on heels of pos­i­tive ASH re­sults

Spun out of Johns Hop­kins back in 2018, Nex­Im­mune is look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on strong ASH da­ta from its lead pro­gram.

The biotech priced at $17, the high end of its range, rais­ing $110 mil­lion in the process. It plans to trade on the tick­er $NEXI. Orig­i­nal­ly plan­ning to sell 4.7 mil­lion shares, Nex­Im­mune ul­ti­mate­ly sold 6.5 mil­lion, help­ing it achieve that high end.

Nex­Im­mune cen­ters around the con­cept of spe­cial­ized nanopar­ti­cles that act as anti­gen-pre­sent­ing cells to in­cite a T cell at­tack on tu­mors. Re­searchers pre­sent­ed ini­tial re­sults from a Phase I/II study last De­cem­ber for NEXI-001, show­ing it in­duced a re­turn to base­line lev­els of ab­solute lym­pho­cyte counts with­in three to 35 days among the first five pa­tients dosed.

The pro­gram is still in its ear­ly days, though, and Nex­Im­mune is look­ing to en­roll some­where be­tween 22 and 28 to­tal pa­tients. With­in its S-1, Nex­Im­mune said it plans to steer IPO funds to­ward both this pro­gram and NEXI-002, first dosed in a hu­man last Oc­to­ber in a mul­ti­ple myelo­ma tri­al.

If the com­pa­ny’s tech ends up work­ing, re­searchers say it could spark a more durable at­tack that would in­volve more tar­gets and less like­li­hood of a set­back for pa­tients — par­tic­u­lar­ly if they can make an im­pact on naïve and mem­o­ry T cells to keep the hu­man im­mune sys­tem on alert.

Af­ter piv­ot to gene ther­a­py, Deci­bel moves quick­ly to IPO

Deci­bel Ther­a­peu­tics is mov­ing fast af­ter a Se­ries D just three months ago.

Back in No­vem­ber, the com­pa­ny raised $82 mil­lion in the round, and Thurs­day evening they priced their up­sized IPO. Deci­bel priced at $18 per share, the high end of its range, and pulled in $127 mil­lion. They sold 7.1 mil­lion shares af­ter an­nounc­ing plans to sell 5.9 mil­lion.

When it hits Nas­daq on Fri­day, Deci­bel will trade on the tick­er $DBTX.

Deci­bel had spent years fo­cused on pre­vent­ing hear­ing loss, but they piv­ot­ed last win­ter to gene ther­a­pies that can re­store lost hear­ing. The move came af­ter fail­ing to find a bio­mark­er that could let them run a pre­ven­ta­tive tri­al, as well as what they char­ac­ter­ized as sur­pris­ing ad­vance­ments in ge­nom­ic and re­gen­er­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy.

It’s now one of three ma­jor Boston-area biotechs chas­ing these types of cures, next to the gene ther­a­py out­fit Ak­ou­os and the stem cell re­gen­er­a­tion de­vel­op­ers at Fre­quen­cy Ther­a­peu­tics.

Deci­bel’s first gene ther­a­py was de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Re­gen­eron, but isn’t sched­uled to hit the clin­ic un­til at least 2022. Re­searchers are start­ing with fix­ing a sin­gle gene in peo­ple with the OTOF mu­ta­tions, but the long-term goal is to build cures for more gen­er­al hear­ing loss and bal­ance dis­or­ders.

Small stress-fo­cused Pro­ta­genic files its $18 mil­lion S-1

On the small­er side of things, neu­ro dis­or­der biotech Pro­ta­genic Ther­a­peu­tics filed for an $18 mil­lion IPO on Thurs­day.

The NY-based biotech is work­ing on neu­ropep­tides de­rived from the TCAP fam­i­ly. Pro­ta­genic’s lead pro­gram, PT00114, is be­ing de­vel­oped to treat stress-re­lat­ed dis­or­ders such as PTSD and drug and al­co­hol ad­dic­tions with­out in­ter­fer­ing with brain func­tion.

The com­pound is ex­pect­ed to com­plete IND-en­abling stud­ies in ear­ly 2021, and sub­se­quent­ly en­ter Phase I/II tri­als. Pro­ta­genic said in its S-1 it plans to fun­nel mon­ey to­ward en­rolling this “bas­ket” tri­al, with the goal of sign­ing up 42 pa­tients.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, Pro­ta­genic’s goal is to im­prove men­tal health by coun­ter­bal­anc­ing stress over­drive and restor­ing the health of neu­ronal cells. Pro­ta­genic is al­ready list­ed on the OTC­QB mar­ket, with se­cu­ri­ties list­ed at $4.14 as of Feb. 2.

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.

FDA Commissioner Rob Califf joined the heads of the CDC and NIH in the hot seat today before a key House subcommittee, explaining that there needs to be a much faster, more coordinated way to oversee vaccine safety, and that foreign biopharma inspections, halted for years due to the pandemic, are slowly ramping up again.

Califf, who stressed to the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health that the CDC also needs better data, made clear that the FDA’s ability to monitor the safety of vaccines “would also benefit greatly by a coordinated federal public health data reporting authority.”