Another biotech is squeezing into the crowded IPO waiting room just in time for the weekend. BlossomHill Therapeutics, a San Diego-based oncology outfit focused on small molecules, has filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to publicly offer stock for the first time.
The biotech, which did not specify how many shares it plans to offer or at what price, plans to use the funds to fertilize its early-stage pipeline.
The company emerged in February 2024 having raised a total of $173 million from the likes of Colt Ventures, Cormorant Asset Management, OrbiMed and more. BlossomHill’s seeds were planted by scientific founder, president and CEO J. Jean Cui, Ph.D., after her previous venture, Turning Point Therapeutics, was bought by Bristol Myers Squibb for $4.1 billion.
The biotech’s lead asset is a macrocyclic EGFR-targeting molecule called BH-30643, which is currently recruiting for a phase 1/2 trial in non-small cell lung cancer. BlossomHill intends to use the cash from an IPO to fuel the current study and launch a new potentially registrational phase 2 trial, according to the filing.
By pursuing EGFR-mutant NSCLC, BlossomHill is teeing up a showdown with AstraZeneca’s approved Tagrisso, the current first-line standard-of-care that brought the Big Pharma more than $7 billion in global sales (PDF) last year. Johnson & Johnson’s Rybrevant, too, represents an established challenger in the field, and BlossomHill noted in the filing that numerous other companies are also developing potential rivals for BH-30643.
The biotech’s second clinical asset, BH-30236, has no direct competitor, and, if approved, would be the first drug to successfully target a CDC-like kinase (CLK). BH-30236 is being tested in a phase 1/1b trial that is currently enrolling patients with relapsed or refractory acute myelogenous leukemia or higher-risk myelodysplastic syndrome.
Then there’s the preclinical pan-KRAS inhibitor, BH-501284, that BlossomHill plans to push into the clinic in the first half of 2027. In the Ras world, the biotech is contending with other preclinical efforts from Clasp Therapeutics and Verastem Oncology, all of whom lag behind Revolution Medicines, which may see its breakthrough drug daraxonrasib approved next year.
BlossomHill is the latest in a growing line of biotechs hoping to bloom into the public markets. In the past several days, metabolic biotech Vogenx and itch-focused Attovia Therapeutics both also filed for IPOs, and sleep apnea specialist Apnimed disclosed its own Nasdaq dreams last week.