Ed­i­tor’s note: In­ter­est­ed in fol­low­ing bio­phar­ma’s fast-paced IPO mar­ket? You can book­mark our IPO Track­er here.

The IPO mar­ket con­tin­ues to churn, with a promi­nent AI drug de­vel­op­er be­com­ing the lat­est biotech to reg­is­ter with the SEC.

Re­cur­sion Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals filed its S-1 pa­per­work late Mon­day, com­ing about six months af­ter com­plet­ing a $239 mil­lion Se­ries D round and se­cur­ing a deal with Bay­er worth up to $1 bil­lion. The Salt Lake City-based biotech is pen­cil­ing in a $100 mil­lion IPO raise for now, but could have its sights set on a much high­er fig­ure.

Biotech IPOs have re­mained hot in the first quar­ter fol­low­ing a record year in 2020, when the in­dus­try saw 91 pub­lic de­buts with a col­lec­tive $16.5 bil­lion raised, per Nas­daq. Through the first two and a half months of 2021, the in­dus­try has raised a com­bined $3.81 bil­lion among 22 biotechs that have priced, per the End­points News tal­ly.

And af­ter a brief cool down to­ward the end of Feb­ru­ary, the mar­ket start­ed heat­ing back up again last week when four biotechs priced, mark­ing the sec­ond-busiest week of 2021. That ti­tle, how­ev­er, be­longs to the first cal­en­dar week of Feb­ru­ary, when 10 com­pa­nies went pub­lic.

Re­cur­sion’s Se­ries D marked one of the largest, if not the sin­gle largest, fund­ing rounds for an ar­ti­fi­cial-in­tel­li­gence-fo­cused biotech. The Bay­er deal al­so sig­ni­fied an im­por­tant rev­enue stream for the biotech, with Bay­er promis­ing up to $100 mil­lion in mile­stones for each of up to 10 pro­grams the com­pa­nies could pur­sue.

The com­pa­ny’s AI ap­proach cen­ters around a 100,000 square-foot ware­house in down­town Salt Lake City, where ro­bots take Petri dish­es of dif­fer­ent cell types and knock out dif­fer­ent genes. They’re con­stant­ly tak­ing pic­tures in the process, with the dif­fer­ences be­ing too small for a hu­man eye to dif­fer­en­ti­ate. But their com­put­ers can, and by do­ing so pick up pat­terns to in­di­cate what can make a cell sick and which genes, when tar­get­ed, can make them healthy.

With­in its S-1, Re­cur­sion sig­naled a broad de­vel­op­ment push across its pipeline. The biotech plans to fo­cus the funds on Phase II tri­als for four of its pro­grams: REC-4881 for fa­mil­ial ade­no­ma­tous poly­po­sis, REC-3599 for GM2 gan­gliosi­do­sis, REC-2282 for neu­rofi­bro­mato­sis type 2 and REC-994 for cere­bral cav­ernous mal­for­ma­tion.

There are al­so plans to use some of the mon­ey on six of the biotech’s pre­clin­i­cal can­di­dates, in­clud­ing Bat­ten dis­ease, sol­id and hema­to­log­i­cal ma­lig­nan­cies and the lead mol­e­cule for the treat­ment of C. dif­fi­cile col­i­tis.

Rare heart mu­ta­tion biotech Ren­o­va­cor rides $116M SPAC to Nas­daq

An­oth­er biotech has gone pub­lic via the SPAC route, which like tra­di­tion­al IPOs, has seen a hefty rise in the in­dus­try over the last year.

Tues­day’s win­ner is Ren­o­va­cor, pulling off a re­verse-merg­er with Chardan Cap­i­tal Mar­kets’ sec­ond blank check com­pa­ny. Once the deal clos­es in the sec­ond quar­ter, Ren­o­va­cor will see pro­ceeds of $116 mil­lion and list on Nas­daq un­der the new tick­er $RCOR.

SPACs con­tin­ue to be all the rage on Wall Street, with sev­er­al no­table back­ers list­ing new hold­ing com­pa­nies and tak­ing them pub­lic re­cent­ly. Fore­site and Per­cep­tive both launched new SPACs ear­li­er this year, and Richard Bran­son took bio­phar­ma by storm when his blank check com­pa­ny merged with 23andMe in Feb­ru­ary.

Ren­o­va­cor’s raise is ex­pect­ed to help the biotech ad­vance its lead pro­gram in­to Phase I/II stud­ies, which is an AAV‑based gene ther­a­py for pa­tients suf­fer­ing from di­lat­ed car­diomy­opa­thy due to mu­ta­tions in the BAG3 gene. An IND sub­mis­sion is ex­pect­ed for mid-2022 with the tri­al be­gin­ning “short­ly there­after,” the com­pa­ny said.

DCM pa­tients are typ­i­cal­ly treat­ed with a cock­tail of treat­ments in­clud­ing ACE in­hibitors, be­ta-block­ers, wa­ter pills and blood thin­ners. Ren­o­va­cor’s ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­py is en­gi­neered to re­place the gene to re­store func­tion.

The biotech had raised $11 mil­lion in a Se­ries A back in Au­gust 2019.

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.