Af­ter com­plet­ing a fi­nanc­ing megaround for $115 mil­lion just a lit­tle over a month ago, Dyne Ther­a­peu­tics is ready to hit the Nas­daq on Thurs­day.

The biotech has raised $233 mil­lion for its pub­lic of­fer­ing af­ter pric­ing shares at $19 apiece, above its ex­pect­ed range of $16 to $18. That’s an of­fer­ing that’s well-up­sized — by about 33% — af­ter Dyne ini­tial­ly filed its S-1 in late Au­gust, when it es­ti­mat­ed on­ly a $100 mil­lion raise. Dyne will trade un­der the tick­er $DYN.

More than four dozen biotechs have al­ready gone pub­lic this year, sur­pass­ing the to­tal from all of 2019. Com­bined, the com­pa­nies have raised more than $11 bil­lion in what con­tin­ues to be a ban­ner year for the in­dus­try. Over half of those biotechs, in­clud­ing Dyne, raised at least $200 mil­lion each.

With­in the S-1, the com­pa­ny did not give much of a look be­hind the cur­tain re­gard­ing how it would use the pro­ceeds from the raise. The fil­ing in­di­cat­ed ad­vanc­ing R&D in pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams and IND-en­abling stud­ies, but wouldn’t go any fur­ther than that.

Dyne fo­cus­es its re­search around mus­cle dis­eases, cre­at­ing a plat­form that aims to use oligonu­cleotides to de­grade RNA re­spon­si­ble for the dis­ease. The the­o­ry goes that by link­ing an an­ti­body to an oligonu­cleotide, ther­a­pies can be en­gi­neered to tar­get mus­cle cells and de­grade the RNA, avoid­ing tox­i­c­i­ty-re­lat­ed prob­lems.

The com­pa­ny’s lead pro­gram is de­vel­op­ing ther­a­pies for my­oton­ic dy­s­tro­phy, a dis­ease caused by an ab­nor­mal ex­pan­sion in a re­gion of the DMPK gene. Dyne hasn’t yet reached the clin­ic, but the com­pa­ny says that its pre­clin­i­cal stud­ies showed a re­ver­sal of my­oto­nia af­ter a sin­gle dose in a dis­ease mod­el, dura­bil­i­ty of re­sponse up to 12 weeks and en­hanced mus­cle dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Fur­ther along the pipeline are pro­grams for Duchenne mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy and fa­cioscapu­lo­humer­al mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy, as well as dis­cov­ery work in the car­diac and meta­bol­ic are­nas.

Dyne go­ing pub­lic Thurs­day is the lat­est in a se­ries of quick jumps, as the com­pa­ny came out of stealth with a $50 mil­lion launch round backed by At­las in April 2019. Ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Ja­son Rhodes, a part­ner at the in­cu­ba­tor, will own a 31.1% stake in the com­pa­ny, with For­bion’s Dirk Ker­sten get­ting 19.6% and MPM’s Ed­ward Hur­witz own­ing 15.8%. The April round was fol­lowed by an ad­di­tion­al $115 mil­lion in fund­ing in ear­ly Au­gust, a round led by Vi­da Ven­tures and Sur­vey­or Cap­i­tal.

At the time of the Au­gust raise, Dyne re­mained mum on how its gene ther­a­pies, specif­i­cal­ly for Duchenne, would com­pare to ap­proach­es at oth­er com­pa­nies like Sarep­ta, whose con­tro­ver­sial Ex­ondys 51 did not prove to be cost-ef­fec­tive nor par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fi­cial, ac­cord­ing to ICER. The or­ga­ni­za­tion found that the im­pact of Sarep­ta’s ther­a­py on Duchenne pa­tients was un­clear and wouldn’t reach cost-ef­fec­tive­ness be­low a $150,000 bench­mark, a con­clu­sion Sarep­ta called “fa­tal­ly flawed.”

So­cial im­age: Joshua Brumm, Dyne CEO

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.

Digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics announced on Thursday that it’s cutting 35% of its staff as it awaits FDA clearance for its first product.

The company, which launched eight years ago, is one of a growing group of companies seeking a digital alternative to traditional medicine. The space saw a record $7.5 billion in investments in 2021, according to Chris Dokomajilar at DealForma, with uses spanning ADHD, PTSD and other indications. However, private insurers have been slow to hop on board.