Ideaya wraps $50M IPO to fuel clinical drive on synthetic lethality
Ideaya Biosciences has followed several other downsized IPOs onto the Nasdaq, beginning a new public life with a $50 million raise and the ticker symbol $IDYA.
Led by CEO Yujiro Hata, an experienced biotech exec who built the South San Francisco company from scratch while an entrepreneur-in-residence at 5AM, Ideaya is all about targeted cancer therapies and synthetic lethality — the strategy of targeting two genes simultaneously for a more potent effect. It’s starting out with an early-stage drug picked up for a song from Novartis.
Yujiro Hata IdeayaThe plan is to take the drug, a PKC inhibitor for cancers with GNAQ and GNA11 mutations, straight into a basket study in solid tumors, then follow that with a slate of preclinical programs composing what Hata sees as the most “diverse portfolio” in the precision medicine field.
Prior to the IPO, he’s amassed $140 million in two financing rounds from some of the biggest investor names, including Celgene, Novartis and Roche as well as 6 Dimensions, Perceptive, BVF, Nextech, GV and WuXi Healthcare Ventures. 5AM and Canaan held the biggest chunks of stock.
Key to Ideaya’s success would be the precise segmentation of patients using molecular diagnostics — a booming field ripe for technical innovations and capital injection of its own.
Case in point: Personalis, is seeking $115 million on the promise of the genome sequencing tech it sells to pharmas (including Merck and Pfizer), biotechs, universities and other medical research institutes.
Its ImmunoID NeXT platform, Personalis says, is “the first technology to enable comprehensive analysis of both a tumor and its immune microenvironment from a single sample and provides utility across immuno-oncology, targeted, and personalized therapies.” And that’s one of several products it plans to commercialize later this year.
The proceeds will fund everything from R&D and infrastructure to hiring and marketing, the company wrote in an SEC filing. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Abingworth Bioventures V each control a quarter of the shares.
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