Local life sciences startup Boundless Bio filed to go public Wednesday, the first San Diego biotech company to do so this year.
According to industry group Biocom California, this is the first initial public offering (IPO) by a local life sciences company in the last four months.
After an unprecedented boom in venture capital activity in 2021, the market in the US has slowed significantly due to high interest rates and ongoing supply chain issues. Recently, business transactions have increased, but investors are more selective about how they use their money.
Boundless Bio is a clinical-stage oncology company developing a novel approach to block certain genes from turning cells into tumors. The company is conducting clinical trials for its small molecule therapies that target extrachromosomal DNA – genetic material linked to certain types of cancer.
According to the company, it has been detected in 14 percent of early-stage cancers and up to 40 percent of metastatic cancers. These “oncogene-enhanced” tumors have proven difficult to treat with current therapies.
The company — located just off Genesee Avenue and in the center of San Diego's biotech cluster — is also targeting its therapy at patients whose tumors do not benefit from existing approaches such as molecular targeted therapies or immunotherapies.
Boundless Bio is working on a pipeline of three cancer drugs, a diagnostic test to identify patients for its drug, and a proprietary platform to study other potential cancer DNA targets.
The company did not disclose the proposed price of its shares or the amount of shares it will offer in its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It trades on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol “BOLD.”
Boundless Bio raised $100 million last year and was one of only a few local companies to raise a funding round of more than $100 million in 2023. Leaps by Bayer, the investment arm of pharmaceutical giant Bayer, led the financing round with RA Capital Management.
As of Dec. 31, the company has raised $253.5 million and has $120.8 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, according to filings. Boundless Bio increased its cash flow by approximately $36 million from 2022 to 2023.
Last year, the company posted a net loss of about $49.4 million – an increase of about $3.5 million from the previous year. As of Dec. 31, Boundless Bio reported a deficit of $136.1 million.
Boundless Bio plans to use proceeds from the IPO to advance its cancer therapies and advance its drugs through clinical trials. The company did not disclose the timeline that the IPO funds are expected to implement. The company expected to receive preliminary clinical proof-of-concept safety and antitumor activity data for its first drug in the second half of 2024.
Even as venture capital deals have slowed, life sciences companies like Boundless, which promise clinical data within months — not years — are attracting investor attention.
There is still a lot of capital available, so there have been some interesting deals in San Diego in recent months, said Jay Lichter, managing partner of local investment firm Avalon Bioventures.
“Biotech IPOs are not liquidity events – they are simply financing in the public environment,” he said.
Lichter explained that there are very few large commercial life sciences companies here – with the exception of health device makers like Thermo Fisher and Illumina – and that they are not the pharmaceutical giants that make drugs. Therefore, the big return for investors and the driver of San Diego's biotech market comes from mergers and acquisitions. Although San Diego hasn't seen many life sciences IPOs in recent months, there have been a handful of acquisitions.
For example, Johnson & Johnson bought San Diego-based Ambrx Biopharma for $2 billion in January. Two weeks later, French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi bought Inhibrx, including a promising drug therapy, for up to $2.2 billion.
In 2023, the US stock market recorded 154 IPOs, 15 percent fewer than in 2022, when there were 181 IPOs. That's a far cry from the record number of 1,035 IPOs in 2021.
Last year, many of those public new entrants were in the healthcare industry, including San Diego-based RayzeBio, which went from an initial public offering to a $4.1 billion acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb in September.
Boundless Bio's IPO is underwritten by Goldman Sachs & Co., Leerink Partners, Piper Sandler and Guggenheim Securities.
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