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.

In the insular world of biotech, a spectacular failure can sometimes stay on any executive’s record for a long time. But for David Meek, the man at the helm of FerGene’s recent implosion, two questionable exits made way for what could be an excellent rebound.

Meek, most recently FerGene’s CEO and a past head at Ipsen, has become CEO at Mirati Therapeutics, taking the reins from founding CEO Charles Baum, who will step over into the role of president and head of R&D, according to a release.

The biotech industry has faced repeated calls to diversify its workforce — and in the last year, those calls got a lot louder. Though women account for just under half of all biotech employees around the world, they occupy very few places in C-suites, and even fewer make it to the helm.

Some companies are listening, according to a recent BIO survey which showed that this year’s companies were 2.5 times more likely to have a diversity and inclusion program compared to last year’s sample. But we still have a long way to go. Women represent just 31% of biotech executives, BIO reported. And those numbers are even more stark for women of color.

For a first-time fund, Jeito Capital talks a lot about continuity.

Rafaèle Tordjman had spotlighted that concept ever since she started building the firm in 2018, promising to go the extra mile(s) with biotech entrepreneurs while pushing them to reach patients faster.

Coincidentally, the lack of continuity was one of the sore spots listed in a report about the European healthcare sector published that same year by the European Investment Bank — whose fund is one of the LPs, alongside the American pension fund Teacher Retirement System of Texas and Singapore’s Temasek, to help Jeito close its first fund at $630 million (€534 million). As previously reported, Sanofi had chimed in €50 million, marking its first investment in a French life sciences fund.

When Genentech swooped in to buy NASH-focused Jecure Therapeutics back in 2018, a handful of the startup’s executives weren’t quite ready to disperse.

It had been just three years since Jecure launched with a preclinical portfolio of NLRP3 inhibitors — and the takeover came sooner than anyone, including CEO Jeff Stafford, had expected. So he got talking with James Veal and Gretchen Bain, two serial entrepreneurs in charge of Jecure’s R&D.