Boston-area biotechs Upstream Bio and CAMP4 Therapeutics are headed to the Nasdaq on Friday, the latest companies to IPO in what appears to be a recovery for startups trying to raise capital on the public market.
Upstream Bio priced at $17 per share, the high end of the $15 to $17 range it set earlier this week. By selling 15 million shares — 2.5 million more than originally planned — it will raise $255 million in new cash.
CAMP4, meanwhile, priced its shares $CAMP at $11 apiece, $3 below the low end of the $14 to $16 range it marketed to investors. It sold 6.82 million shares versus an initial plan to offer 5 million and will raise $75 million.
The IPO window is “showing signs of recovery,” Oppenheimer bankers wrote in a quarterly analysis this week. GPCR biotech Septerna is also in the IPO queue, and Bain-backed obesity startup Rivus Pharmaceuticals is also considering a listing this fall, Bloomberg reported this week.
For Upstream $UPB the offering will add to its coffers as it runs Phase 2 and later-stage trials of its TSLP receptor antagonist verekitug. The experimental treatment, licensed from Astellas, is being studied for severe asthma and chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps.
Upstream hopes to enter a similar market as Amgen and AstraZeneca’s Tezspire, as well as Blackstone-backed Uniquity Bio’s solrikitug.
CAMP4 is working on regulatory RNA and has a Phase 1 trial of its lead drug, a CPS1-targeting medicine for urea cycle disorders.
The IPO comes a few weeks after CAMP4 added BioMarin to its partnership lineup, which already includes Fulcrum Therapeutics and Eli Lilly. Earlier in its startup days, CAMP4 had pacts with Biogen and Alnylam.