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%).

Bayer and Exscientia are winding down their three-year collaboration, leaving the big German pharma to take the AI-designed compounds born out of the pact further.

London-based Exscientia revealed in its Q2 update that the partners have “mutually agreed to end” their collaboration, which kicked off in early 2020, after recently achieving a drug discovery milestone. In an SEC filing, Exscientia said it terminated the pact on May 30, about six months early.

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.”