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A fresh slate of biotech IPOs has filed to go pub­lic as the cal­en­dar turns to­ward the sec­ond quar­ter.

Three com­pa­nies filed their reg­is­tra­tional pa­per­work over the hol­i­day week­end, with Rain Ther­a­peu­tics and Im­pel Neu­roPhar­ma sub­mit­ting S-1s on Fri­day and Aneb­u­lo Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals do­ing so last Thurs­day. Rain leads the es­ti­mat­ed rais­es of the group with a $100 mil­lion tranche pen­ciled in, fol­lowed by Im­pel at $75 mil­lion and Aneb­u­lo at a mod­est $15 mil­lion.

The moves come af­ter a huge haul for the sec­tor in the first quar­ter, which saw 32 biotechs file or price their IPOs. Among the com­pa­nies that went pub­lic, the in­dus­try raised more than $4.6 bil­lion in the first three months of the year.

Should biotechs con­tin­ue at this pace, 2021 will eclipse 2020’s record raise by more than $2 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from Nas­daq.

Rain cap­i­tal­izes on Dai­ichi Sankyo pro­gram li­censed last year

Rain Ther­a­peu­tics saw a show­er of good for­tune in 2020.

Around La­bor Day last year, the biotech tripled its pipeline in the span of a week, li­cens­ing a re­search pro­gram from Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty and nab­bing a Phase II-ready drug from Dai­ichi Sankyo. Rain fol­lowed that up with a $63 mil­lion fundraise short­ly af­ter to push for­ward all three of its pro­grams.

The new­er can­di­dates pair up with the com­pa­ny’s orig­i­nal mis­sion, one which helped it launch with an $18 mil­lion Se­ries A back in 2018. Rain’s first ex­per­i­men­tal drug was tar­lox­o­tinib, a small mol­e­cule in­hibitor de­signed to tar­get low oxy­gen lev­els in tu­mors and there­by spar­ing healthy tis­sues.

Now, though, the Dai­ichi pro­gram has be­come Rain’s lead. Dubbed RAIN-32, the can­di­date will see the bulk of Rain’s IPO funds fun­neled to­ward it. Per the S-1, Rain plans to launch three stud­ies for RAIN-32, in­clud­ing a piv­otal Phase III study in an MDM2-am­pli­fied sub­type of li­posar­co­ma.

The raise will al­so help fund a Phase II tu­mor-ag­nos­tic bas­ket tri­al in cer­tain sol­id tu­mors and a Phase 2 tri­al in in­ti­mal sar­co­ma for the pro­gram, as well as help man­u­fac­tur­ing costs and fund fur­ther trans­la­tion­al stud­ies.

Rain plans to trade un­der the tick­er $RAIN.

Im­pel tak­ing its in­haled drugs pub­lic ahead of mi­graine PDU­FA

More than two years af­ter its crossover raise, Im­pel Neu­roPhar­ma is fi­nal­ly head­ing to Nas­daq.

The Seat­tle-based biotech has a unique ap­proach for get­ting CNS drugs de­liv­ered to the brain — through the nose. Im­pel’s tech is cen­tered around a de­liv­ery sys­tem of nasal dos­es of old and thor­ough­ly un­der­stood drugs, with re­search go­ing to­ward mi­graines, Parkin­son’s and ag­i­ta­tion re­lat­ed to autism.

Led by CEO Adri­an Adams, Im­pel hopes an en­hanced nasal de­liv­ery ap­proach can im­prove a drug’s per­for­mance, of­fer­ing an open­ing for an im­proved ther­a­peu­tic ef­fect with a liq­uid or dry for­mu­la­tion of an old drug. Their mi­graine pro­gram has com­plet­ed its piv­otal study, with an ex­pect­ed PDU­FA date of Sept. 6 lat­er this year.

As such, the ma­jor­i­ty of the planned IPO cash will go to­ward fund­ing the po­ten­tial com­mer­cial launch of the mi­graine treat­ment, which Im­pel plans to mar­ket as Trud­he­sa. The drug is an up­per nasal for­mu­la­tion of di­hy­droer­go­t­a­mine to treat acute mi­graines.

The re­main­der of the IPO funds will help the INP105 pro­gram, de­signed for acute treat­ment of ag­i­ta­tion and ag­gres­sion as­so­ci­at­ed with autism spec­trum dis­or­der. This can­di­date is a nasal re­for­mu­la­tion of olan­za­p­ine.

Im­pel plans to list un­der the tick­er $IM­PL.

Cannabi­noid over­dose biotech Aneb­u­lo looks to fund new stud­ies

Aneb­u­lo Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals brings up the rear this week, pen­cil­ing in just $15 mil­lion for its IPO raise.

The Lake­way, TX-based com­pa­ny, found­ed just last year, is fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing treat­ment for cannabi­noid over­dose and sub­stance ad­dic­tion. Aneb­u­lo’s lead can­di­date, ANEB-001, is de­signed to re­verse the neg­a­tive ef­fects of cannabi­noid over­dose with­in one hour of ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Aneb­u­lo is hop­ing to ful­ly fi­nance a Phase II proof-of-con­cept study for the pro­gram with its IPO mon­ey. But this won’t be the last time Aneb­u­lo is look­ing to raise mon­ey — in their S-1, they not­ed that they’ll have more cap­i­tal in about 18 months to run the piv­otal safe­ty tri­als, launch the drug com­mer­cial­ly and make mile­stone pay­ments to Ver­nalis, from whom Aneb­u­lo li­censed its pro­gram.

The biotech plans to trade un­der the tick­er $ANEB.