San Diego-based Axiom Biosciences intends to go public via a listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) followed by a co-listing on the Nasdaq at a later a date—a strategy the company claims is a first for a U.S. biotech.
The move comes on the heels of encouraging phase 1 trial data earlier this month on Axiom's lead stem cell therapy in the treatment of two fatal newborn neurological diseases. The therapy was co-developed with South Korea-based Medinno.
Although Axiom would be the first U.S. biotech to have a primary listing on the HKEX, the strategy aligns with the ethos of the company, Axiom CEO Remo Moomiaie-Qajar, M.D., told Fierce in an interview.
“There is always a first in everything, right?” Moomiaie-Qajar. “When we started this company eight years ago, I challenged everyone to reconsider their preconceived notions about science, and I think that this now follows through with us challenging people to reconceive their notions about financing and their financing options.”
In 2023, Axiom—when it was still known as Cytonus—secured $11.7 million in a series A financing round led by Seoul-based Partners Investment, alongside other Asian and U.S. investors. The international investor pool, coupled with Axiom's existing partnership with Medinno, made a HKEX listing an easy choice, explained Moomiaie-Qajar.
HKEX regulations allow pre-revenue and pre-profit biotech companies to list if they have hit specific milestones, Moomiaie-Qajar noted. One criterion is for the company to have developed at least one core drug product that has passed the initial phase 1 clinical trial phase, which “fits very well with us,” the CEO said.
Axiom reported a 0% mortality rate over two years in nine newborns dosed with their leading therapy, Wharton-jelly-derived MSCs. The newborns had either intraventricular hemorrhage, characterized by bleeding inside the ventricles of the brain, or hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, where the baby's brain doesn't receive enough oxygen. Those neurological diseases are associated with a 46% mortality rate in the first year of life, Axiom explained at the time.
The HKEX has been “actively courting life sciences issuers for a lengthy period of time,” Mitchell Kapoor and Raghuram Selvaraju, Ph.D., biotech analysts at H.C. Wainwright, told Fierce. The move to list primarily in Hong Kong has the potential to set a higher benchmark valuation and create a “more effective springboard” for Axiom to enter the U.S. markets, they suggested.
“There is a very sophisticated and mature capital market in Hong Kong, and ultimately that is conducive to our ideas of growing our company,” Moomiaie-Qajar said. “We have always believed that we are going to make a global biotech company, and Asia is a vital component of that strategy.”
The Hong Kong IPO is expected to take place in 2027, as Axiom awaits regulatory review. Moomiaie-Qajar said he hopes to open a path to listing that other American innovators can follow.
Beyond that, Axiom intends to pursue a secondary U.S. listing on the Nasdaq a few years later, which the CEO descrived as a “complementary decision in a broader strategy.”