Fol­low­ing an $85 mil­lion Se­ries B round back in June, Athi­ra Phar­ma is set to be­come the third biotech in the last three days to go pub­lic Fri­day.

Athi­ra raised $204 mil­lion for its IPO af­ter pric­ing shares at $17 apiece, the high-point of its ex­pect­ed range. Ini­tial­ly peg­ging $100 mil­lion in fi­nanc­ing, Athi­ra said it of­fered 12 mil­lion to­tal shares and will trade un­der the tick­er $ATHA.

Now that Athi­ra plans to hit the Nas­daq, there have been more than 50 biotech IPOs this year, more than the to­tal from last year. Com­bined, the com­pa­nies have raised more than $11 bil­lion. Over half of those biotechs, in­clud­ing Athi­ra, raised at least $200 mil­lion each.

It’s al­so ap­proach­ing the 56 in­dus­try IPOs to oc­cur two years ago, per in­de­pen­dent an­a­lyst Brad Lon­car.

Athi­ra pro­vid­ed a de­tailed out­line with­in its S-1 of how it plans to use funds from the raise, il­lus­trat­ing that much of the mon­ey will be used to boost de­vel­op­ment for its lead ATH-1017 pro­gram, for­mer­ly dubbed NDX-1017. About $75 mil­lion will fund two tri­als in Alzheimer’s dis­ease, in­clud­ing a Phase II/III tri­al mea­sur­ing two dosage lev­els and a sep­a­rate Phase II tri­al, while an­oth­er $20 mil­lion will fund a Phase II study in Parkin­son’s de­men­tia.

An ad­di­tion­al $30 mil­lion is slat­ed to fund IND-en­abling stud­ies of two prod­ucts fur­ther down the pipeline — ATH-1019, for the treat­ment of neu­ropsy­chi­atric in­di­ca­tions, and ATH-1018, in neu­ropa­thy. It’s worth not­ing, how­ev­er, that these es­ti­mates were based on as­sump­tions of low­er IPO rais­es.

ATH-1017 fol­lows a fa­mil­iar strat­e­gy in Alzheimer’s re­search in tar­get­ing the dam­aged synap­tic net­work. But the com­pound fo­cus­es on a rel­a­tive­ly un­ex­plored path­way, the he­pa­to­cyte growth fac­tor (HGF), as well as its MET re­cep­tor. If suc­cess­ful, the pro­gram would re­gen­er­ate af­flict­ed tis­sue.

The com­pa­ny has got­ten this far thanks to a Per­cep­tive-led $85 mil­lion Se­ries B back in June, buoyed by da­ta in a Phase Ib that showed pa­tients tak­ing the ATH-1017 can­di­date were able to rec­og­nize a se­ries of re­peat­ed tones more quick­ly than the place­bo group. For those with de­men­tia, the nor­mal recog­ni­tion falls with­in a 400 to 450-mil­lisec­ond range, and the tri­al’s base­line was 390 mil­lisec­onds. The drug arm of the tri­al, which en­rolled just sev­en pa­tients, saw the av­er­age fall to 311 mil­lisec­onds, com­pared to no change in the four-pa­tient place­bo arm.

Joe Edel­man

Athi­ra will be go­ing up against some strong head­winds, as many Alzheimer’s pro­grams that have come be­fore have not proved promis­ing. Most promi­nent­ly, Bio­gen reg­is­tered fail­ures in sev­er­al high-pro­file stud­ies look­ing in­to the amy­loid be­ta the­o­ry. The com­pa­ny court­ed con­tro­ver­sy af­ter in­clud­ing APOe4 car­ri­ers, who are at a high­er risk of the dis­ease, in the low­er-dose arm of one of their tri­als with­out tak­ing them out of the place­bo group.

Per­cep­tive’s Joe Edel­man will own an 11.6% stake in the com­pa­ny, with CEO Leen Kawas get­ting 9.3% of shares.

Over the past three years, Endpoints News has spotlighted 60 women who have blazed trails and supercharged R&D across the biopharma world. And judging from the response we’ve received, to both our special reports and live events, telling their stories — including any obstacles they may have had to overcome — has inspired our readers in many different ways.

But change takes time, and the fact remains that women are still underrepresented at the upper ranks of the drug-making world.

The FDA is still wary about a trial testing a microbiome therapy in patients with steroid-resistant acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD).

A year after MaaT Pharma’s IND application in the US was first met with a clinical hold, the French biotech said the agency is maintaining the hold. The crux of the matter, MaaT suggested, has to do with the way it puts together its drug candidate, which is administered as an enema (i.e. an injection of fluid into the bowel).

Pfizer is launching its second-ever rebate program, this time for Panzyga, its treatment for a rare neurological disease of the peripheral nerves.

The program began last month, according to STAT which first reported the news, and offers a refund of out-of-pocket costs for patients who must discontinue their course before the fifth treatment for “clinical reasons.”

Panzyga was approved back in 2018 to treat primary immunodeficiency (PI) in patients two years and older and chronic immune thrombocytopenia (cITP) in adults. It has since picked up an indication in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), a condition that’s characterized by weakness of the arms or legs, tingling or numbness, and a loss of deep tendon reflexes, according to the NIH.