Dan­ish drug­mak­er Gen­mab A/S is off to the races with per­haps one of the biggest biotech pub­lic list­ings in decades, hav­ing reaped over $500 mil­lion on the Nas­daq, as it po­si­tions it­self as a bonafide play­er in an­ti­body-based can­cer ther­a­pies.

The com­pa­ny, which has long served as J&J’s $JNJ key part­ner on the block­buster mul­ti­ple myelo­ma ther­a­py Darza­lex, has as­sert­ed it has been look­ing to launch its own pro­pri­etary prod­uct — one it owns at least half of — by 2025.

There are at least five such prod­ucts — which Gen­mab has fond­ly chris­tened “knock-your-socks-off an­ti­bod­ies” — in­clud­ing an an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate (ADC) called ti­so­tum­ab ve­dotin be­ing co-de­vel­oped with Seat­tle Ge­net­ics $SGEN, and an­oth­er ADC called enapotam­ab ve­dotin that the com­pa­ny ful­ly owns. Then there’s an an­ti­body tar­get­ing sol­id tu­mors called Hexa­Body-DR5/DR5 as well as a bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body en­gi­neered to fight B-cell ma­lig­nan­cies called Duo­Body-CD3xCD20 — which are al­so ful­ly owned by Gen­mab. Fi­nal­ly, there’s an­oth­er bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body — Duo­Body-PD-L1x4-1BB — whose de­vel­op­ment is split with BioN­Tech.

Apart from these, the Copen­hagen based com­pa­ny has a string of oth­er part­ners: Gilead $GILD, No­vo Nordisk $NVO, Am­gen $AMGN, Im­mat­ics and ADC Ther­a­peu­tics.

On Thurs­day, the Copen­hagen-based com­pa­ny said it gen­er­at­ed gross pro­ceeds of $505,875,000 by sell­ing 2,850,000 or­di­nary shares of Gen­mab in the form of 28.5 mil­lion Amer­i­can De­posi­tary Shares (ADSs) at a price of $17.75 per ADS. It is set to trade un­der the sym­bol “GMAB”.

Last week, the com­pa­ny had set out the po­ten­tial terms of its IPO: with a plan to sell 27.8 mil­lion shares at $18.11 per ADS, which would have trans­lat­ed to a mar­ket cap of a whop­ping $11.8 bil­lion.

Darza­lex, which raked in $90 mil­lion in mile­stone pay­ments and $262 mil­lion in roy­al­ties and ac­count­ed for near­ly 76% of Gen­mab’s 2018 rev­enue, cur­rent­ly is be­ing test­ed in mul­ti­ple tri­als in a bid to ex­pand its use. Mean­while, com­pe­ti­tion from Sanofi $SNY is loom­ing.

Mike Grey Linkedin

Gen­mab’s oth­er mar­ket­ed treat­ment Arz­er­ra — part­nered with No­var­tis $NVS — has not fared as well. Last year, the Swiss drug­mak­er record­ed net sales of $26 mil­lion — gen­er­at­ing rough­ly $5 mil­lion in roy­al­ties for Gen­mab. The drug has been cleared for use in chron­ic lym­pho­cyt­ic leukemia and is now be­ing stud­ied for mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis.

There were an­oth­er cou­ple of small­er IPO pric­ings on Wednes­day.

Af­ter wrest­ing con­trol of two liv­er drugs from Shire and prim­ing them for piv­otal tri­als — Mirum Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ Mike Grey has steered the Cal­i­for­nia biotech to a $75 mil­lion IPO. The two drugs — mar­al­ix­i­bat and volix­i­bat — cost Mirum $7.5 mil­lion up­front. Shire — now part of Take­da — had wa­gered $260 mil­lion on Lu­me­na (where Grey was once CEO) large­ly on the promise of these two as­sets, which both tar­get the api­cal sodi­um-de­pen­dent bile acid trans­porter, a pro­tein ex­pressed in the small in­tes­tine.

Bob Gould Ful­crum

The com­pa­ny — which has raised $120 mil­lion Se­ries A cash since launch­ing last No­vem­ber — has sold 5 mil­lion shares at $15/share — at the mid­point of its range of $14 to $16. It is set to trade on the Nas­daq on Thurs­day un­der the sym­bol “MIRM”.

While on the east coast, Ful­crum Ther­a­peu­tics has raised gross pro­ceeds of $72 mil­lion, by sell­ing 4.5 mil­lion shares at $16/share — the low­er end of its range of $16 to $18.

The Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts-based com­pa­ny — which raised $80 mil­lion in a Se­ries B round to shep­herd the first of its gene-reg­u­lat­ing small mol­e­cules in­to the clin­ic last Sep­tem­ber — is run by biotech vet­er­an Bob Gould who for­mer­ly served as Epizyme’s chief. The com­pa­ny is set to trade on Thurs­day un­der the sym­bol “FULC” on the Nas­daq.

So­cial im­age: Shut­ter­stock

The pandemic stock market has proven fruitful for virtually any type of biotech. Now a 7-year-old cell therapy startup will see how much it can yield for a company that specializes in fighting viruses.

AlloVir, a company that until 2019 largely lived off grant money, has filed for a $100 million IPO to back its line of off-the-shelf, virus-fighting T cells. Although in normal circumstances, $100 million could be a solid return for a biotech that got its first major round of funding only last year, we’ll have to wait to see how much the company ultimately earns. As Covid-19 has sent investor money scurrying to almost anyone in drug development, every single biotech to go public this year has prized above their midpoint or upsized their offering, according to Renaissance Capital, sometimes dramatically so.

→ Switzerland’s Numab Therapeutics has added Boehringer Ingelheim to its roster of collaborators. And they will start with two projects aiming at developing new drugs for difficult-to-treat lung and gastrointestinal cancers and patients with geographic atrophy. “Numab’s technology platform fits well with our internal antibody discovery and engineering capabilities and will enhance our efforts to deliver transformative antibody-based therapeutics to patients,” said Paige Mahaney, an SVP at Boehringer Ingelheim.

Takeda has been burdened under mountains of debt since acquiring Shire for $62 billion 18 months ago, but one of the company’s biggest moves yet to relieve the stress could be on the horizon.

The Japanese pharma is preparing a bidding war for its $3.7 billion over-the-counter subsidiary, a sale that would dwarf previous spinoffs. Any transaction would be the latest in what’s been a long string of sell-offs, as Takeda marches unflinchingly toward its ultimate goal of shedding $10 billion in assets.