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It was an­oth­er busy week in the biotech IPO mar­ket as the sec­ond quar­ter con­tin­ues to churn out sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in­to the sec­tor.

Re­cur­sion led the way with a $436 mil­lion raise on Fri­day, pric­ing its IPO at $18, the high end of its range. Our own John Car­roll went in depth on that raise over the week­end. Al­so on Fri­day, pre­clin­i­cal can­cer biotech Bio­mea Fu­sion de­buted with a $153 mil­lion raise priced at its own high end of $17 per share. The two com­pa­nies helped push the com­bined IPO raise for 2021 to near­ly $5.5 bil­lion.

There were al­so sev­er­al new SEC fil­ings at the end of last week, with Gy­ro­scope Ther­a­peu­tics, Ta­laris Ther­a­peu­tics and Sagimet Bio­sciences all sub­mit­ting their rel­e­vant pa­per­work. Gy­ro­scope and Ta­laris each pen­ciled in the $100 mil­lion that’s be­come a com­mon place­hold­er through­out the IPO boom, while Sagimet put down $75 mil­lion.

And lat­er this week, biotech is ex­pect­ing an­oth­er huge IPO af­ter Zymer­gen set its terms, ex­pect­ing at least $400 mil­lion in its raise.

A hearty raise for Bio­mea gets its pre­clin­i­cal R&D to Nas­daq

Bio­mea is work­ing on small mol­e­cules for ge­net­i­cal­ly de­fined can­cers, but with a twist — they want their drugs to be ir­re­versible.

As the com­pa­ny lays out in its S-1, an ir­re­versible small mol­e­cule is a syn­thet­ic com­pound that forms a per­ma­nent bond to its tar­get pro­tein. The idea here is to in­duce greater tar­get se­lec­tiv­i­ty, low­er drug ex­po­sure and pro­vide a much more durable re­sponse than typ­i­cal small mol­e­cules.

Bio­mea is fo­cus­ing sole­ly on its lead pro­gram, known as BMF-219. The can­di­date comes from the biotech’s ir­re­versible small mol­e­cule plat­form and is aimed at in­hibit­ing menin in menin-de­pen­dent can­cers. BMF-219 hasn’t hit the clin­ic yet, but Bio­mea is hop­ing to file an IND at some point in the sec­ond half of 2021.

The S-1 ex­pands on how Bio­mea plans to get there. About $80 mil­lion to $90 mil­lion of the raise will go to­ward the BMF-219 pro­gram, in­clud­ing the IND-en­abling stud­ies as well as a planned Phase I/II tri­al. An­oth­er $40 mil­lion to $45 mil­lion is slat­ed for R&D for two ad­di­tion­al undis­closed pro­grams.

Bio­mea is trad­ing on the tick­er $BMEA.

All signs point to­ward big IPO for Gy­ro­scope

Fil­ing its F-1 on Fri­day, Gy­ro­scope is look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on its sig­nif­i­cant mo­men­tum from the first quar­ter.

Back in Feb­ru­ary, the UK-based biotech post­ed an ear­ly win for its AMD gene ther­a­py, not­ing pa­tients who re­spond­ed to their GT005 can­di­date in a Phase I/II tri­al saw a 146% in­crease in an im­por­tant bio­mark­er and a de­crease in fur­ther down­stream bio­mark­ers. Then in March, Gy­ro­scope took that win to the bank in clos­ing a $148 mil­lion Se­ries C.

Less than a month lat­er, Gy­ro­scope is push­ing for­ward to Nas­daq. The $100 mil­lion writ­ten out in their F-1 is like­ly a mod­est place­hold­er, giv­en the na­ture of their Se­ries C just a few weeks ago. The com­pa­ny plans to use a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of its pro­ceeds to ad­vance GT005 in three stud­ies, as well as fund re­search in an­oth­er prod­uct known as GT011.

GT005 is cur­rent­ly in two Phase II stud­ies for pa­tients with ge­o­graph­ic at­ro­phy, an ir­re­versible de­gen­er­a­tion of reti­nal cells caused by dry-AMD. The can­di­date is in­ject­ed un­der the reti­na to in­crease pro­duc­tion of the Com­ple­ment Fac­tor I pro­tein, which Gy­ro­scope be­lieves could damp­en an over­ac­tive com­ple­ment sys­tem that’s been tied to wors­en­ing at­ro­phy in AMD pa­tients.

Once it de­buts, Gy­ro­scope plans to trade on the tick­er $VISN.

Ta­laris seeks to trans­plant it­self to the pub­lic do­main

Ta­laris, too, re­cent­ly saw a nine-fig­ure raise, com­ing in the form of a $115 mil­lion Se­ries B back in Oc­to­ber.

The mis­sion here is to make or­gan trans­plants safer — and po­ten­tial­ly elim­i­nate the need for im­muno­sup­pres­sive drugs — by way of al­lo­gene­ic stem cell ther­a­py. At the time of the Se­ries B, CEO Scott Re­quadt said he saw “dra­mat­ic progress” over the pre­vi­ous 18 months, not­ing Ta­laris had its first Phase III tri­al for the lead FCR001 pro­gram in liv­ing donor kid­ney trans­plant re­cip­i­ents.

FCR001 it­self is com­posed of stem and im­mune cells that are pro­cured from a healthy donor, who is al­so the or­gan trans­plant donor. Ta­laris does all its man­u­fac­tur­ing it­self and is then ad­min­is­tered to the pa­tient af­ter “non­mye­loab­la­tive con­di­tion­ing,” ac­cord­ing to the biotech’s S-1.

Some of the IPO cash will be fun­neled to­ward the reg­is­tra­tional Phase III for FCR001, while ad­di­tion­al funds will help fur­ther R&D and oth­er tri­als for the pro­gram. There will al­so be some mon­ey ear­marked for the ex­pan­sion of CMC op­er­a­tions to sup­port even­tu­al com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the ap­proved prod­uct, should it get there.

Af­ter pric­ing, Ta­laris plans to trade on the tick­er $TALS.

Sagimet rides Feb­ru­ary crossover to IPO fil­ing

For­mer­ly known as 3-V Bio­sciences, Sagimet brings up the rear among Fri­day’s fil­ings.

The biotech fo­cus­es on de­vel­op­ing se­lec­tive FASN in­hibitors for liv­er dis­eases and can­cers in­clud­ing NASH, for which they re­leased pos­i­tive Phase II da­ta for the pro­gram TVB-2640 in June 2020. Sagimet said the can­di­date’s high dose had a 61% re­sponse rate across 30 pa­tients and led to a mean liv­er fat re­duc­tion of 28.2%.

And this Feb­ru­ary, Sagimet pulled in an $80 mil­lion Se­ries F crossover to help launch a Phase IIb study for that pro­gram. The FASN en­zyme is in­volved in lipid syn­the­sis. In­hibit­ing it, in the­o­ry, could re­duce fat pro­duc­tion and al­le­vi­ate these tar­get dis­eases.

Sagimet’s S-1 laid out a fair­ly vague plan for its IPO raise, not­ing on­ly that some funds will help the stud­ies and man­u­fac­tur­ing for TVB-2640, as well as launch­ing a first in-hu­man tri­al for an­oth­er pro­gram.

The biotech plans to trade un­der the tick­er $SGMT.

When Biolyse, an Ontario-based manufacturer of sterile injectables, forged a deal with Bolivia last week to manufacture up to 50 million J&J Covid-19 vaccine doses, the agreement kicked off what will prove to be a test case for how difficult the system of compulsory licenses is to navigate.

The first problem: When Biolyse asked J&J, via a March letter, to license its Covid-19 vaccine, manufacture it in Canada and pay 5% royalties on shipments to needy, low-income countries, J&J rejected the offer, refusing to negotiate. J&J also did not respond to a request for comment.

Novartis’ Entresto started the ACC weekend off rough with a trial flop in heart attack patients, slowing the drug’s push into earlier patients. Now, an NIH-sponsored study is casting doubt on Entresto’s use in the most severe heart failure patients, another black mark on the increasingly controversial drug’s record.

Entresto, a combination of sacubitril and valsartan, could not beat out valsartan alone in an outcomes head-to-head for severe heart failure patients with a reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), according to data presented Monday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.

The bispecific T cell engager field is absolutely packed with big-name players who have crowded in despite some high-profile failures in the class. Now, a Bay Area biotech thinks it may have the key to tackling BiTE toxicity, using an old “on-off switch” idea to give doctors more control of the drugs’ effect on patients.

San Francisco-based Soteria Biotherapeutics uncloaked Monday with a $42 million Series A co-led by Roche Venture Fund and 5AM Ventures with participation from the Novartis Venture Fund to advance its bispecific T cell engagers with an “on-off” switch the founders think can avoid some of the dire safety flags endemic to the class.