Ver­sant-backed Black Di­a­mond Ther­a­peu­tics has set its sights on an up­sized biotech IPO to kick 2020 off.

The first start­up out of Ver­sant’s Ridge­line dis­cov­ery en­gine in Basel is set to make its pub­lic de­but on Thurs­day, rais­ing gross pro­ceeds of $201 mil­lion through the sale of 10.6 mil­lion shares priced at $19 a pop.

That ex­ceeds the ini­tial plan to raise $151 mil­lion by of­fer­ing 8.9 mil­lion shares at a price range of $16 to $18 — a pos­i­tive sign that the IPO win­dow is still wide open for busi­ness, es­pe­cial­ly for can­cer biotechs. On­col­o­gy is lu­cra­tive, with can­cer fast catch­ing up with car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease as the most dead­ly con­di­tion in the de­vel­oped world.

Ahead of the IPO, Black Di­a­mond’s tu­mor-ag­nos­tic ap­proach to fight­ing can­cer spawned more than $200 mil­lion in ven­ture fund­ing. At the end of 2018 the com­pa­ny — found­ed by two sci­en­tists in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment of the can­cer drug Tarce­va, David Ep­stein and Eliz­a­beth Buck — ini­tial­ly raised $20 mil­lion in its Se­ries A. That in­jec­tion was sup­ple­ment­ed by two back-to-back to $85 mil­lion rounds of fi­nanc­ing, led by sev­er­al high pro­file groups in­clud­ing New En­ter­prise As­so­ci­ates, RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment and Box­er Group.

While in­hibitors used to sup­press ki­nase do­main mu­ta­tions, or TKIs, are con­sid­ered stan­dard-of-care treat­ment for many types of can­cer, al­losteric mu­ta­tions are still un­chart­ed ter­ri­to­ry. Us­ing their tech plat­form, Black Di­a­mond is look­ing to map al­losteric mu­ta­tions dri­ving can­cer to de­vel­op in­hibitors that are tu­mor ag­nos­tic.

Onco­genes — which have the po­ten­tial to cause the growth of can­cer cells — are ac­ti­vat­ed by ki­nase do­main mu­ta­tions or by al­losteric mu­ta­tions. Al­lostery is a com­mon process by which pro­teins trans­mit the ef­fect of bind­ing at one site to an­oth­er — of­ten dis­tal — func­tion­al site, al­low­ing for reg­u­la­tion of ac­tiv­i­ty.

“World­wide sales of ki­nase in­hibitors, one class of tar­get­ed ther­a­pies, ex­ceed­ed $25 bil­lion in 2018. De­spite the suc­cess of these drugs, a re­cent analy­sis found that on­ly nine per­cent of pa­tients with metasta­t­ic can­cer have tu­mors with ge­net­ic pro­files that could make them el­i­gi­ble for treat­ment with an ap­proved pre­ci­sion on­col­o­gy med­i­cine,” Black Di­a­mond cit­ed in its IPO fil­ing ear­li­er this month,

As in­creas­ing ge­nom­ic pro­fil­ing of can­cer pa­tients iden­ti­fies clus­ters of un­char­ac­ter­ized ge­nom­ic al­ter­ations, the biotech’s tech­nol­o­gy is de­signed to iso­late “drug­gable mu­ta­tion bas­kets” to cre­ate pre­ci­sion med­i­cines that could ben­e­fit a broad­er swathe of pa­tients.

The com­pa­ny’s lead ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­py, BDTX-189, is en­gi­neered to thwart the func­tion of onco­genic pro­teins that af­fect both EGFR and HER2, and is be­ing groomed for a Phase I/II tri­al set to kick off in the first half of this year. Black Di­a­mond al­so has a pre­clin­i­cal can­di­date — among oth­er undis­closed as­sets brew­ing in its pipeline — de­signed to com­bat glioblas­toma, a par­tic­u­lar­ly ag­gres­sive and dead­ly form of brain can­cer.

Black Di­a­mond will make its de­but on the Nas­daq un­der the sym­bol “$BDTX.”

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.