Beijing Luzhu Biotechnology Co. Ltd. raised a net HK$242 million (US$31 million) from an IPO in Hong Kong but shares in the developer of vaccines and therapeutics for infectious diseases, cancer and autoimmune diseases plummeted on the first day of trading. Luzhu’s shares (HK:2480) started trading on May 8 at HK$31.50 and fell about 30% throughout the day to close at HK$22. Founded in 2001, Luzhu has yet to turn a profit. It recorded net losses of ¥725.2 million (US$92 million) in 2022 and ¥539.4 million in 2021.
In what has been described as one of the slowest, closed-window public markets in recent years, Acelyrin Inc. priced an upsized IPO, raising $540 million, the fifth highest amount for a U.S. IPO by a traditional biopharma company to date. Despite industry IPOs raising only $628 million throughout the first four months of 2023 – the lowest amount in 10 years, Acelyrin’s IPO suggests that there is still a strong investor appetite ready and waiting for innovative technologies with solid data.
Buoyed by the progress it has made with its lead integrin therapy for moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, MORF-057, which significantly reduced disease activity in a phase IIa trial, Morphic Therapeutic Inc. is raising $240 million in a public offering to further advance the candidate through the clinic.
The IPO market in Europe is firmly shut and not a single company went public in the first quarter of 2023. The impact of this is trickling down to limit access to venture capital for biotechs.
A precancerous condition caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) affects up to 300,000 American women who are diagnosed each year, and yet there are no treatments, just preventive vaccines introduced in 2006 – targeted to younger generations prior to the first sexual encounter. That leaves a large proportion of the female population stuck with a “wait-and-see” approach that involves continuous monitoring of their HPV infection through pap smears to detect cellular changes that could lead to cervical cancer. South San Francisco-based Antiva Biosciences Inc. is seeking to find a better response to this condition known as high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN2,3) with its lead topical therapeutic, ABI-2280, a prodrug of an acyclic nucleoside phosphonate that is currently in phase I trials.