With a Bris­tol My­ers Squibb en­dorse­ment in tow, Ver­sant-backed can­cer drug de­vel­op­er Re­pare Ther­a­peu­tics has set its sights on a Nas­daq de­but.

On Fri­day, the Mon­tre­al-based com­pa­ny with op­er­a­tions in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts that is yet to en­ter the clin­ic, un­veiled plans for a $100 mil­lion IPO, bank­ing on its “syn­thet­ic lethal­i­ty” plat­form.

The ba­sic idea is to tar­get the ge­net­ic ba­sis of tu­mors, a com­mon idea across pre­ci­sion on­col­o­gy med­i­cines. But in­stead of tar­get­ing the per­pe­tra­tor mu­ta­tion di­rect­ly, the com­pound is de­signed to go af­ter the oth­er gene in the gene pair. The ra­tio­nale is based on the decades-old ge­net­ic prin­ci­ple that in­di­cates two mu­ta­tions are lethal on­ly when com­bined to­geth­er.

A sim­i­lar ap­proach was first so­lid­i­fied with the ap­proval of PARP in­hibitors, such as As­traZeneca and Mer­ck’s Lyn­parza, Clo­vis’ Rubra­ca and GSK’s Ze­ju­la. PARP is a pro­tein used by dam­aged cells to ini­ti­ate re­pair, and by thwart­ing it, the class of drugs is en­gi­neered to pre­vent can­cer cells from re­pair­ing them­selves, there­by cat­alyz­ing their de­struc­tion.

At Re­pare, sci­en­tists have em­ployed the use of a CRISPR-based screen­ing tool to hone in on these syn­thet­i­cal­ly lethal gene pairs and then en­gi­neered drugs to hunt them. The Re­pare ap­proach promis­es to be tu­mor-ag­nos­tic — the com­pa­ny’s lead ex­per­i­men­tal prod­uct, RP-3500, is a small mol­e­cule de­signed to block the DNA re­pair pro­tein — atax­ia telang­iec­ta­sia —  as well as an en­zyme that’s ac­ti­vat­ed by DNA repli­ca­tion stress. Clin­i­cal tri­als are an­tic­i­pat­ed to be­gin lat­er this quar­ter, and if all goes well, a Phase I/II study in the third quar­ter.

Re­pare has com­pa­ny in the field, such as its Cam­bridge neigh­bor Tan­go Ther­a­peu­tics that has CRISPR dis­cov­ered five pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams and raised $60 mil­lion in a fresh in­jec­tion of fund­ing in April. Cyteir Ther­a­peu­tics, an­oth­er ri­val, net­ted about $40 mil­lion last Oc­to­ber.

So far, 2016 formed-Re­pare has raised $135.2 mil­lion — its most re­cent cap­i­tal in­jec­tion was an $82.5 mil­lion Se­ries B fi­nanc­ing last Sep­tem­ber. The IPO fil­ing shows the com­pa­ny has pen­ciled in a $100 mil­lion IPO, but of late, the fi­nal fig­ures raised are typ­i­cal­ly far high­er.

Daniel Durocher

Days ago, Bris­tol My­ers bought in­to the dream, fork­ing over $50 mil­lion up­front and $15 mil­lion in an eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment in a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Re­pare. Pre-IPO, Ver­sant is Re­pare’s largest share­hold­er, own­ing rough­ly a 30% stake — oth­er in­vestors in­clude MPM Cap­i­tal (11.8%) and Or­biMed (11.2%).

Frank Sicheri

The ar­chi­tect of Re­pare’s tech­nol­o­gy is com­pa­ny co-founder Daniel Durocher of the Lunen­feld-Tanen­baum Re­search In­sti­tute (the re­search arm of Mount Sinai Hos­pi­tal) who is one of the first sci­en­tists who pi­o­neered the use of CRISPR to screen for syn­thet­i­cal­ly lethal gene pairs. Frank Sicheri, the oth­er co-founder, is al­so from Lunen­feld-Tanen­baum.

The biotech IPO parade continues marching forward as 2020 turns toward the fourth quarter.

IN8bio, a New York-based company focused on genetically modified gamma delta T cell therapies, filed to go public Friday seeking an $86 million raise. The company has two clinical-stage candidates being studied in glioblastoma and leukemia, respectively.

By any stretch of the imagination, 2020 has already been a huge year for biotech, and nowhere does it appear more obvious than the vast amounts of companies hitting the public market.

Soon after Chris Nowers left Cell Medica — freshly rebranded Kuur Therapeutics — in February, the Kite Pharma alum was introduced to another cell therapy player.

The basic idea of building an off-the-shelf allogeneic platform with a CAR-NK approach was familiar to him, riding on the same wave as Takeda, J&J-backed Fate, Nkarta and others. But then there was something else that stood out: a membrane-bound TNF related apoptosis inducing ligand variant, or TRAIL variant, that’s also engineered onto the NK cell for a dual-targeted attack.