Menlo Park, CA's Virobay is lining up for a Wall Street debut, filing to bank $50 million in an IPO and accelerate its pipeline of treatments for pain and autoimmune diseases.
The biotech plans to land on the Nasdaq and trade under "VBAY," holding off for now on specifying how many shares it will offer and at what price.
Virobay is earmarking its potential proceeds to advance a 5-drug pipeline based on its platform for developing small-molecule inhibitors of cathepsins, a subclass of proteases that play a role in cellular function and are implicated in a variety of diseases.
Leading the way is VBY-036, a treatment for neuropathic pain slated to enter Phase II in the first half of next year, followed by VBY-891, a Phase II-ready psoriasis drug licensed to Denmark's Leo Pharma in a deal worth up to $307 million. Behind that is VBY-036, a Crohn's disease treatment on tap to start a mid-stage trial in the second half of 2015.
The rest of Virobay's haul will go toward two early-stage cathepsin inhibitors for which the biotech has high hopes. VBY-376, scheduled to start Phase I next year, has shown preclinical promise in liver fibrosis and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). And VBY-825, for which the company plans to file an IND next year, targets the rare primary biliary cirrhosis, which results in an immune attack on the bile ducts. The biotech also touts discovery-stage assets for other autoimmune ailments, cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
Meanwhile, the industry's record-setting performance on Wall Street has taken a turn for the volatile, forcing many hopefuls to delay, discount or call off their debuts. But biotechs with differentiated assets and clear-cut paths to success have still managed to make it out of biotech's tightening IPO window, including Sage Therapeutics ($SAGE) with its up-sized $90 million haul; Kite Pharma ($KITE) and its $128 million debut; and Zafgen ($ZAFG), which raked in $96 million to support its obesity treatment.
Virobay's filing comes about two months after the company wrapped up an $18 million Series B, adding new investor Perceptive Advisors to a syndicate that includes TPG Biotech, Alta Partners and AbbVie ($ABBV). The company, founded in 2006 as a spinout of Celera Genomics, has just 8 employees, employing the increasingly popular virtual biotech model and relying on CROs to handle much of the clinical legwork for its drug programs.
- read the S-1