
Nasdaq rings in Jonathan Lim's next cancer play, Pfizer-backed startup and Harvard spinout with collective $534M raise under their belts
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IPOs are booming in 2021, and companies are going public earlier than ever.
About 45% of IPOs offered in the first half of the year were for companies that were still in preclinical and discovery stages. That’s a big change for the 66 biopharma therapeutics and platform companies who completed their IPO in the first half of the year, raising $9.3 billion in total.
The hype surrounding SPACs has been lighter in Q2, compared to a busy Q1. There have been 93 healthcare and life science-focused SPAC IPOs since January 2020, with 47 of those raising $15.85 billion in 2021.
Erasca and Imago BioSciences each penciled in $100 million raises at the end of June as placeholder numbers, while TScan did the same in April. All three priced their IPOs this week. Here’s what you need to know about the latest biotechs headed to Wall Street:
Nasdaq rings in Jonathan Lim’s next cancer play
Clinical-stage oncology company Erasca has priced its upsized IPO at $16 a share, and has sold 18.75 million shares, the company announced Thursday evening. Proceeds from the offering are expected to be around $300 million.
The company is leading with a therapy for patients with RAS/MAPK pathway-driven cancers. Molecular alterations in RAS and the MAPK pathway account for 5.5 million new cases of cancer across the world each year, the company detailed in its S-1. Of those patients, more than 90% have no treatment options. The company said it expects to have four candidates in the clinic within the next year and a half, and file an investigational new drug application every 12-18 months over the next five years. Its two clinical programs right now are ERAS-601, which was licensed from NiKand Therapeutics, and ERAS-007, which was acquired from ASN Product Development.
“We believe our world-class team’s capabilities and experience, further guided by our scientific advisory board, which includes the world’s leading experts in the RAS/MAPK pathway, uniquely position us to achieve our bold mission of erasing cancer,” it said.
The company was launched by CEO Jonathan Lim in 2018, after he auctioned his company Ignyta to Roche for $1.7 billion. Last August, the company raised its fundraising total to $300 million. Erasca says it has 11 programs in the works.
Erasca will trade under the ticker $ERAS, and the IPO is expected to close on July 20. JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Evercore ISI and Guggenheim Securities are acting as joint book-running managers.
Imago prices IPO in quest for bone marrow candidate, scores new investment by Pfizer
A little more than a month after Imago announced positive Phase II results in a trial for bomedemstat, Imago has used that to help propel itself to an IPO priced on the high end of its range.
Imago BioSciences has also priced its IPO at $16 a share, selling 8.4 million shares to raise $134 million. Concurrently, it says Pfizer will be making a private purchase of its stock for an additional $20 million.
Imago is developing small molecule products that inhibit lysine-specific demethylase 1 (LSD1), an enzyme that plays a role in the production of blood cells in blood marrow.
About 83% of patients with essential thrombocythemia, a disease in which the body produces too many platelets, saw a significant reduction of platelet counts while maintaining stable hemoglobin levels.
In a study of patients with advanced myelofibrosis — a type of bone cancer that disrupts the body’s normal production of blood cells — 94% of patients showed a reduction of 50% or more in symptoms. In 34 patients evaluated for mutant allele frequencies, the number decreased in 44% of patients and remained the same in 47%, with no new mutations in the 660 days that followed.
Imago will be listed on the Nasdaq under $IMGO. Jefferies, Cowen, Stifel and Guggenheim Securities are joint bookrunners on the deal.
Ahead of anticipated IND applications, TScan heads to Nasdaq
A Novartis-backed Harvard spinout looking to build a TCR repository has priced its IPO on the low end of its range, the company announced Thursday.
TScan Therapeutics has sold 6.7 million shares at $15 to raise $100 million. This brings the company’s market value to $384 million. It will trade on the Nasdaq under $TCRX.
At the start of the year, TScan landed a $100 million crossover round to continue its work on T cell targets.
The company is developing a pipeline of T cell receptor-engineered therapies for the treatment of hematological and solid tumors. INDs for two of its liquid tumor candidates will be submitted in Q4 of this year, and INDs for three of its four solid tumor candidates will be submitted by the second half of 2022.
Morgan Stanley, Jefferies, Cowen, and Barclays are joint bookrunners.