Jim Wilson's gene ther­a­py start­up Pas­sage Bio bucks mar­ket sen­ti­ments, rais­ing up­sized $216M IPO

A coro­n­avirus fear-in­duced blood­bath on the Nas­daq has not stopped Pas­sage Bio from mak­ing a pub­lic de­but — and an ex­u­ber­ant one.

By pric­ing an up­sized of­fer­ing at $18, the top of the range, the gene ther­a­py biotech bagged $216 mil­lion from its IPO, 72% more than it’s orig­i­nal­ly pen­ciled in.

The pro­ceeds like­ly re­flect­ed con­fi­dence in Jim Wil­son, who gath­ered all the tools he’s built over decades of gene ther­a­py re­search to as­sem­ble the start­up and teamed up with Fra­zier and Or­biMed to hone its fo­cus on rare, mono­genic dis­or­ders of the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem. Just be­fore the IPO, Deer­field part­ner Bruce Gold­smith took over from Or­biMed’s Stephen Squin­to as CEO.

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