Bambusa Therapeutics has upsized its IPO, selling more shares at the midpoint of its target range to gross $168.9 million for bispecific R&D. But Aspen Neuroscience underperformed expectations, hitting the bottom end of its target range and selling slightly fewer shares than expected.
Boston-based Bambusa originally filed to sell 9.4 million shares for $15 to $17. At the midpoint of the price range, the IPO would have grossed $150.4 million. By breezing past that target, the biotech has secured more cash to advance a pipeline led by BBT001, a bispecific that targets IL-4Rα and IL-31 to treat conditions including eczema. Bambusa is moving BBT001 toward a phase 2b trial.
BBT001 and other assets in Bambusa’s pipeline originated at Biotheus, the Chinese drug developer that BioNTech acquired for $800 million in 2024 to secure full rights to a PD-L1xVEGF-A bispecific antibody. Members of the leadership team, as well as many employees, previously worked together at BioNTech.
San Diego-based Aspen originally aimed to sell 9.4 million shares for between $15 and $17 apiece. Like Bambusa’s offering, the IPO would have grossed $150.4 million at the midpoint of the range. Ultimately, Aspen offered 9.375 million shares at $15 each. The offering will gross about $140.6 million.
Before finalizing the terms of the offering, Aspen set out plans to invest $110 million in a phase 3 trial of sasineprocel in Parkinson’s disease. Sasineprocel is an autologous induced pluripotent stem cell-based therapy designed to replace patients’ lost dopaminergic neurons with dopaminergic neuron precursor cells. The phase 3 trial will enroll people with sporadic and genetic Parkinson’s.
The pricing of the Aspen and Bambusa offerings coincided with NuvOx Therapeutics amending its IPO paperwork. NuvOx still aims to offer 2.86 million shares, priced between $6 and $8. The biotech plans to use the money to complete a phase 2b clinical trial for a form of brain cancer and fund another mid-stage study in acute respiratory distress syndrome.
NuvOx’s revised IPO filing features updated data from the phase 2b brain cancer trial, which has treated four more patients than when the biotech submitted its previous paperwork. The company also provided financial results for the first nine months of the year, compared to the first six months in the earlier filing.