It appears Braveheart Bio isn’t going to let Big Pharma take its freedom anytime soon, as the company is aiming for a Nasdaq listing to move its phase 3 cardiovascular drug forward.
The Tuesday IPO filing did not say how much the company plans to raise, but Braveheart has applied to list under the ticker BRVE. The biotech plans to use the proceeds to advance BHB-1893, an oral cardiac myosin inhibitor designed to treat hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM.
Braveheart is one of a growing number of companies benefiting from the drug development prowess of China’s Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals. Braveheart’s lead asset was licensed from Hengrui in a $1 billion biobuck deal in 2025. Obesity-focused Kailera, which completed a record-breaking IPO earlier this year, was also built around assets licensed from Hengrui.
Braveheart quickly followed the Hengrui licensing pact with a $185 million series A round backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Forbion, OrbiMed, Enavate Sciences and Frazier Life Sciences.
HCM is a genetic heart disease in which the heart muscle abnormally thickens, making it more difficult for the heart to pump blood and increasing the risk of arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
Braveheart and Hengrui released phase 2 data for BHB-1893 in obstructive HCM, or oHCM, and nonobstructive HCM, or nHCM, earlier this year. A March release said the 42-patient oHCM study resulted in “rapid and substantial reductions in left ventricular outflow tract gradient (LVOT-G), an established measure of cardiac obstruction.” In May, Braveheart shared that the 84-patient nHCM study “resulted in improvements across biomarkers of cardiac wall stress and tissue injury, echocardiographic measures of diastolic function and cardiac structure, and patient-reported symptoms and exercise capacity.”
Braveheart said it plans to initiate global phase 3 studies of BHB-1893 in both oHCM and nHCM, with the oHCM trial beginning in the second half of this year and the nHCM trial starting in the first half of 2027. Hengrui is already conducting a phase 3 trial of its version of the drug in China, and Braveheart says more than 250 participants have received BHB-1893 to date.
The filing noted that Braveheart’s drug will compete with Bristol Myers Squibb’s Camzyos and Cytokinetics’ Myqorzo in the cardiac myosin inhibitor class, as both drugs are approved for oHCM. There are no FDA-approved treatments for nHCM, though Cytokinetics reported in May that a phase 3 trial of Myqorzo in the disease met its dual primary endpoints.
Braveheart says BHB-1893 could simplify what it describes as complex dosing and monitoring requirements. The company estimates that fewer than 20% of eligible oHCM patients have received targeted therapies and says the drug’s rapid onset of action and potential convenience could offer advantages over existing treatments.
The public listing news from Braveheart follows a flurry of IPO announcements this year, including those from lipid-focused Scribe Therapeutics, sleep apnea specialist Apnimed and biologics biotech Attovia Therapeutics in the last 10 days.
Braveheart President and CEO Travis Murdoch, M.D., who led HI-Bio’s sale to Biogen in 2024, described BHB-1893’s promise in a May release. “The rapid and meaningful responses across diastolic function, cardiac structure, biomarkers and clinical endpoints in this placebo-controlled study suggest that we may be engaging the underlying pathophysiology in a unique and direct way.”