An­oth­er pan­dem­ic biotech IPO has sold at the high range.

Lyra Ther­a­peu­tics said to­day their pub­lic of­fer­ing, first filed in ear­ly March, raised $56 mil­lion, with 3.5 mil­lion shares sell­ing at $16. Al­though that was a price-per-share at the top of their $14 to $16 range, the of­fer­ing re­mains just a hair short of the ini­tial goal of a $57.5 mil­lion.

Found­ed around an im­plant de­vel­oped by MIT’s Bob Langer and Har­vard’s George White­sides, Lyra is test­ing their lead can­di­date, LY-210, in a Phase II tri­al for chron­ic rhi­nos­i­nusi­tis — a con­di­tion in which spaces in­side the nose and si­nus­es are con­tin­u­al­ly in­flamed, caus­ing breath­ing dif­fi­cul­ty and a per­pet­u­al­ly stuffy nose amid a long list of oth­er symp­toms. Orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped for pe­riph­er­al artery dis­ease, the com­pa­ny’s im­plant is used to de­liv­er the gener­ic an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry mometa­sone furoate di­rect­ly to the af­fect­ed mus­cles.

Lyra’s raise comes on the heels of a string of sev­er­al large biotech IPOs, as com­pa­nies such as Zen­tal­is Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and ORIC Ther­a­peu­tics were able to raise large amounts of cap­i­tal in a mar­ket ea­ger to find as­sets large­ly in­su­lat­ed from the pan­dem­ic. Ear­li­er this week, ADC Ther­a­peu­tics, af­ter with­draw­ing a $200 mil­lion fil­ing in Oc­to­ber, re­turned with a $100 mil­lion of­fer­ing.

The com­pa­ny has a sec­ond as­set — es­sen­tial­ly the same im­plant but larg­er to ac­com­mo­date pa­tients whose si­nus­es have been en­larged from surgery — now en­ter­ing a proof-of-con­cept tri­al, but the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the pro­ceeds will go to a Phase III tri­al and com­mer­cial­iza­tion costs for LY-210. A da­ta read­out on the Phase II is ex­pect­ed in the first quar­ter of 2021.

The IPO comes just 3 months af­ter a $30 mil­lion Se­ries C led by Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors. En­ter­ing the pub­lic of­fer­ing, Per­cep­tive owned about a third of the com­pa­ny (32.4%). Oth­er large share­hold­ers in­clud­ed North Bridge Ven­ture Part­ners (17.3%), en­ti­ties af­fil­i­at­ed with Po­laris Ven­ture Part­ners (16%), RA Cap­i­tal Health­care Fund (9.6%) and In­ter­south Part­ners VII (7.9%).

With just days before President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 booster rollout is set to go into effect, an FDA advisory committee appeared on the verge of not recommending boosters for anyone in the US before a last-minute change of wording laid the groundwork for older adults to have access to a third dose.

The FDA’s adcomm on Vaccines and Related Biological Products (VRBPAC) roundly rejected Pfizer/BioNTech booster shots for all individuals older than 16 by a 16-2 vote Friday afternoon. Soon after, however, the agency posed committee members a new question limiting booster use to the 65-and-older population and individuals at high risk of disease due to occupational exposure or comorbidities.

AstraZeneca and Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo think they’ve struck gold with their next-gen ADC drug Enhertu, which has shown some striking data in late-stage breast cancer trials and early solid tumor tests. Getting into earlier patients is now the goal, starting with Enhertu’s complete walkover of a Roche drug in second-line breast cancer revealed Saturday.

Enhertu cut the risk of disease progression or death by a whopping 72% (p=<0.0001) compared with Roche’s ADC Kadcyla in second-line unresectable and/or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer patients who had previously undergone treatment with a Herceptin-chemo combo, according to interim data from the Phase III DESTINY-Breast03 head-to-head study presented at this weekend’s #ESMO21.

In recent months, the battle for PD-(L)1 dominance has spilled over into early cancer with Merck’s Keytruda and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo all alone on the front lines. Keytruda now has another shell in its bandolier, and it could spell a quick approval.

Keytruda cut the risk of relapse or death by 35% over placebo (p=0.00658) in high-risk, stage 2 melanoma patients who had previously undergone surgery to remove their tumors, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-716 presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

Merck has worked hard to bring its I/O blockbuster Keytruda into earlier and earlier lines of therapy, and now the wonder drug appears poised to make a quick entry into early advanced cervical cancer.

A combination of Keytruda and chemotherapy with or without Roche’s Avastin cut the risk of death by 33% over chemo with or without Avastin (p=<0.001) in first-line patients with persistent, recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-826 study presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

Everest Medicines is on a roll with two licensing deals in one week.

The Shanghai-based biotech has paid Sinovent and SinoMab $12 million upfront for the rights to a BTK inhibitor for renal diseases, the company announced Thursday. The deal comes just days after Everest came away with rights to a Covid-19 vaccine in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.

Everest will pay Sinovent and SinoMab up to $549 million in milestone payments and royalties. The agreement includes tech transfer of Sinovent and SinoMab’s manufacturing process for the candidate, named XNW1011.