Pe­di­atric can­cer biotech Day One Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is head­ed for Nas­daq, in a move that comes less than three months af­ter their work on a brain can­cer treat­ment led to a nine-fig­ure crossover round backed by some blue-chip in­vestors.

The South San Fran­cis­co-based com­pa­ny is pen­cil­ing in $100 mil­lion as their ini­tial IPO tar­get, though the ul­ti­mate raise will like­ly be high­er. Tues­day’s fil­ing comes af­ter RA Cap­i­tal led a $130 mil­lion B round for the com­pa­ny in Feb­ru­ary, fol­low­ing what CEO Je­re­my Ben­der said at the time was “rapid” progress of their lead pro­gram.

When Day One prices in a few weeks, it will trade un­der the tick­er $DAWN.

As the phar­ma in­dus­try con­tin­ues de­vel­op­ing and push­ing for­ward can­cer treat­ments, Day One ex­ecs ar­gue that the main­stream play­ers left pe­di­atric can­cer be­hind. Adult pa­tients make up a sig­nif­i­cant­ly big­ger por­tion of the mar­ket, the com­pa­ny said, and there have been lags in un­der­stand­ing pe­di­atric bi­ol­o­gy prop­er­ly.

Day One’s mis­sion, then, is to try to fill that gap by de­vel­op­ing tar­get­ed ther­a­pies aimed specif­i­cal­ly at chil­dren. Their pro­posed treat­ments are en­tire­ly new ef­forts rather than re­for­mu­lat­ing adult treat­ments that come with heavy side ef­fects, like ra­di­a­tion ther­a­py and chemo.

Their lead pro­gram is a for­mer Take­da pro­gram called DAY101, an oral pan-RAF in­hibitor that can cross the blood-brain bar­ri­er and block mu­ta­tions in gliomas. As such, Day One is aim­ing for an in­di­ca­tion to treat pe­di­atric low-grade gliomas, the most com­mon form of brain tu­mors in chil­dren. The cur­rent stan­dard of care is plat­inum-based chemo, with no clear fa­vorite be­yond that, Ben­der told End­points News in Feb­ru­ary.

The biotech re­cent­ly launched a Phase II study for the ex­per­i­men­tal drug, with the goal of read­ing out top-line re­sults in the first half of 2022. Day One plans to ul­ti­mate­ly en­roll 60 pa­tients in the sin­gle-arm, open-la­bel study and hopes it can form the ba­sis of an ap­proval pack­age.

With­in its S-1, Day One plans to fun­nel its cash not on­ly to­ward this Phase II tri­al, but al­so launch a new Phase III study for the front­line treat­ment of pe­di­atric low grade gliomas next year. Its goals al­so in­clude a Phase II tri­al for RAF-al­tered sol­id tu­mors in pa­tients old­er than 12, as well as a Phase Ib/II study com­bin­ing DAY101 with Mer­ck Kg­GA’s MEK in­hibitor pi­masert­ib to treat adult MAPK-al­tered sol­id tu­mors.

The S-1 al­so pro­vid­ed some de­tails re­gard­ing that deal with Take­da and the com­pa­ny’s eq­ui­ty. Day One on­ly paid $1 mil­lion for the DAY101 can­di­date and at the time of the agree­ment, De­cem­ber 2019, of­fered a Take­da sub­sidiary about a 12% stake in the com­pa­ny. The sub­sidiary, Mil­len­ni­um Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, will con­tin­ue to own that stake when Day One goes pub­lic.

Ben­der for his part, owns a 3% stake, while CMO and founder Sam Black­man has a 4.6% stake. The biggest stake­hold­er is Canaan Part­ners at 21.9%, fol­lowed up by the At­las Ven­ture Fund at 16.9%.

Day One al­so not­ed that Derek DiRoc­co, the RA Cap­i­tal part­ner who joined the board with Feb­ru­ary’s raise, will be leav­ing the com­pa­ny af­ter a very short stint once the biotech be­gins trad­ing pub­licly.

Biotech IPOs con­tin­ue to boom as 2021 march­es for­ward, with more than 50 com­pa­nies hav­ing ei­ther filed or priced their IPOs so far this year. For the year, the com­bined biotech raise is ap­proach­ing $6.5 bil­lion, and is ex­pect­ed to reach near­ly $7 bil­lion lat­er this week when four more com­pa­nies make their Nas­daq de­buts.

Six years ago, a band of neuroscientists from the University of California, San Francisco combined decades of research and jumped into the hunt for an off-the-shelf cell therapy. Now, that team is sprinting toward the clinic with a treatment for epilepsy — but first, it’s making a pit stop at the venture well.

Neurona Therapeutics unveiled a $41.5 million round on Tuesday morning, bringing the San Francisco-based biotech’s total raise to $135 million. The cash will be used to advance the company’s pipeline, including an upcoming Phase I/IIa for its lead candidate, NRTX-1001, in chronic focal epilepsy.

One of the earliest employees at AI biotech Recursion Pharmaceuticals is leading a new company, and he’s just closed a hefty Series A to get things moving.

Enveda Biosciences pulled in $51 million in the raise, the company announced Tuesday morning, with the goal of pushing some of its preclinical programs further along. Led by CEO Viswa Colluru, Enveda aims to research how machine learning can utilize natural biology to create new therapies for Wilson’s Disease, NASH and Parkinson’s disease, among others.

As the Biden administration tries to wrangle the details of its infrastructure bill, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) took a concrete step forward on drug pricing reforms on Tuesday and unveiled five principles for such reforms, including providing Medicare with the ability to negotiate prices.

“Allowing the Secretary of HHS to negotiate the price Medicare will pay creates a much needed mechanism to achieve fairer prices when the market has failed to do so,” Wyden wrote.

Endpoints News turned five years old over the weekend. I wanted to mark the happy occasion by extending our deepest gratitude to Endpoints’ premium subscribers while outlining several other ways to support us as we go broader and get bigger this year and beyond.

Same as any business, we’ve got to create value and get paid for delivering it. So if you depend on Endpoints to stay abreast on biopharma developments, we depend on you too.