For a while, there were none. Suddenly, there were two.
Bicara Therapeutics filed Thursday afternoon for an initial public offering, just a few hours after fellow Boston-area drug developer Zenas BioPharma submitted its own plans for a Nasdaq debut.
Bicara plans to list on the Nasdaq as $BCAX. The filing comes eight months after the Biocon spinout unveiled a $165 million Series C. Last week, it disclosed the board additions of Omega Funds executive partner Mike Powell and Remix Therapeutics chief medical officer Christopher Bowden.
The company didn’t disclose how much it plans to raise in the potential IPO, but it penciled in a maximum offering of $200 million, whereas most biotechs, like Zenas, put $100 million as a placeholder. Bloomberg reported on June 28 that Bicara was looking at an IPO of up to $150 million.
Bicara’s lead experimental drug, a bifunctional EGFR/TGF-β antibody known as BCA101, is in a Phase 1/1b open label study for patients with EGFR-driven solid tumors. It’s being tested alone and in combination with Merck’s Keytruda. The startup aims to go after two culprits of cancer growth by blocking EGFR while also cornering the cytokine TGF-β. It’s exploring the drug’s potential in certain forms of head and neck cancer, as well as other tumor types.
Kiran Mazumdar-ShawAt the time of the company’s Series C last December, CEO Claire Mazumdar told Endpoints News that Bicara expected to start a pivotal trial “toward the end” of 2024. The company reiterated the timeline in its filing, saying it intends to start the trial “late in the fourth quarter of 2024 or early in the first quarter of 2025.”
Also known as ficerafusp alfa, BCA101 derives from the R&D work of India-based biopharma giant Biocon, whose founder and executive chair Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is the aunt of Bicara’s CEO.
Biocon is Bicara’s largest shareholder, owning about 16%, according to the IPO document. RA Capital holds 15%, Red Tree Venture owns almost 9%, Omega Funds and Invus Public Equities each have 6% and TPG Life Sciences Innovations holds nearly 6%.
It spent more than $22 million in the first six months of 2024 on research and development, an increase of more than $1 million over the entire period of 2023 as it expanded clinical efforts, according to the IPO paperwork.
Bicara isn’t in immediate need of money. At the end of June, it had $203 million in cash and equivalents, according to the S-1 paperwork.
Across the board, investors are expecting a near-term federal interest rate cut after months of waiting, which could potentially open a slight window for biotech IPOs after the Labor Day holiday.