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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.

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”

As the ink dries on CSL’s $11.7 billion Vifor buyout, the company posted a dip in profits, due in part to a drop in plasma donations amid the pandemic.

However, CEO Paul Perreault assured investors and analysts on the full-year call that the team has left “no stone unturned” when assessing options to grow plasma volumes. The chief executive also spelled out positive results for the company’s monoclonal antibody garadacimab in hereditary angioedema (HAE), though he isn’t revealing the exact numbers just yet.

Irish drugmaker Endo International is entering into bankruptcy as it faces the weight of serious litigation related to its involvement in the opioid epidemic in the US.

The company has filed Chapter 11 proceedings in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, with the company expected to file recognition proceedings in Canada, the UK and Australia. The company’s bankruptcy filing showed the company had assets and liabilities in the range of $1 billion to $10 billion.