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Pictured: Nasdaq signage and building in New York City/iStock, hapabapa Boundless Bio on Wednesday unveiled additional details regarding its previously announced initial public offering. The cancer-focused biotech will put up for sale 6.25 million shares of its common stock at a price of $16 apiece to generate gross proceeds of $100 million. Boundless can also potentially raise additional funds through a 30-day option offering, which would allow underwriters to buy up to 937,500 more shares of the company’s common stock at the defined initial public offering (IPO) price, minus certain discounts. With its IPO, Boundless will debut on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Thursday under the ticker symbol BOLD. The biotech expects to close its offering on April 2, 2024, contingent on customary closing conditions. Goldman Sachs, Guggenheim Securities, Piper Sandler and Leerink Partners are joint book-running managers for Boundless’ IPO. Earlier this month, the biotech announced its plans to go public but did not specify how much it expected to raise. According to its SEC filing at the time, Boundless will use the IPO proceeds to fund the development of its extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) programs, being developed for cancer indications. The biotech will also use the funds to develop a diagnostic test, which it has currently named ECHO, to detect ecDNA in patients. Boundless has two ecDNA programs in the clinic, though both are still in early stages of study. The first, BBI-355, is the company’s lead program and inhibits checkpoint kinase 1, a central player in the replication and transcription of ecDNA. The biotech is testing BBI-355 in the Phase I/II POTENTIATE trial and expects an early readout later this year. Its second clinical candidate is BBI-825, which is being assessed in the Phase I/II STARMAP study, with data expected in the second half of 2025. BBI-825 is an orally available blocker of the enzyme ribonucleotide reductase, which functions in the assembly and repair of ecDNA. In addition to its two clinical candidates, Boundless is working on a discovery-phase ecDNA program, for which it plans to Investigational New Drug application as early as the first half of 2026. Boundless joins a growing group of biotechs that have gone public this year, following the sector’s 2023 IPO winter. First out of the gate was CG Oncology, which in January 2024 secured $380 million in an oversized offering. Several other companies have since followed, including ArriVent Biopharma, Kyverna Therapeutics, Alto Neuroscience, Fractyl Health and Metagenomi. Tristan Manalac is an independent science writer based in Metro Manila, Philippines. Reach out to him on LinkedIn or email him at [email protected] or [email protected].

At $88.4 million, Boundless Bio has set expectations close to the likes of preclinical gene editing company Metagenomi, which brought in $93.7 million in a February IPO. Boundless Bio’s announcement earlier this month of plans to go public was a sign that the biotech IPO window hadn’t slammed shut after a flurry of offerings at the start of the year. Now, the company has set out its IPO pricing ambitions at the more modest end of the year’s offerings. Boundless is expecting to sell 6,250,000 shares priced between $15 and $17 per share, according to a March 21 Securities and Exchange Commission filing. This would add up to $100 million assuming the final price falls in the middle of that range. Boundless expects net proceeds would reach around $88.4 million. However, this could rise to $102.3 million if underwriters take up their option to buy an additional 937,000 shares. At $88.4 million, Boundless has set expectations closer to the likes of preclinical gene editing company Metagenomi, which brought in $93.7 million in a February IPO, and far below CG Oncology and its whopping $380 million IPO in January, which remains 2024’s largest to date. Boundless may end up bringing in less from the IPO than from its most recent funding round, including a $100 million haul in in May 2023 that had the backing of big beasts like Arch, Bayer and RA Capital Management. The sizable cash infusion helped fuel the biotech’s clinical ambitions, with two programs now in phase 1 studies. The precision oncology company, which describes itself as “the world’s leading ecDNA company,” is focused on extrachromosomal DNA, which are double-stranded molecules that can be the source of cancer-driving genes. The first program, BBI-335, looks to inhibit checkpoint kinase 1 in the hopes of cooling down ecDNA replication. Boundless said in its original IPO filing earlier this month that proof-of-concept and anti-tumor activity data on up to 90 patients are expected in the second half of the year. That asset is followed up by BBI-825, which was launched into its first trial last month. An investigational new drug application for a third program isn't expected to be filed until the first half of 2026. Boundless isn’t the only biotech IPO set for spring. Contineum Therapeutics also filed paperwork this month to raise money for phase 2 trials of its lead prospect and a Johnson & Johnson-partnered molecule. Editor's Note: This story was updated at 3:37 p.m. ET on Thursday, March 21, 2024, to clarify the number of shares being sold in the offering.

Pictured: A Bristol Myers Squibb office building/iStock, hapabapa Bristol Myers Squibb added to its tally of late-phase immuno-oncology wins Wednesday, revealing that combining Opdivo (nivolumab) and Yervoy (ipilimumab) improved overall survival in a patient population served by rival checkpoint inhibitors from AstraZeneca and Roche. BMS’ CheckMate -9DW trial randomized more than 700 people with untreated advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer, to receive the PD-1 and CTLA-4 checkpoint inhibitors Opdivo and Yervoy or the investigator’s choice of sorafenib or lenvatinib. People on the BMS combination were living longer at an interim analysis, causing the study to hit its primary overall survival (OS) endpoint. The company is yet to share data from the study, only revealing that the effect on OS was “significant and clinically meaningful.” BMS added that the safety pro consistent with previously reported results and that adverse events were manageable with established protocols. No new safety signals were seen. BMS, which is still evaluating the readout, plans to share more data at an upcoming medical conference and discuss the results with health authorities. If BMS files for and wins approval, it would emerge as a rival to AstraZeneca and Roche for the first-line liver cancer market. CheckMate -9DW used the kinase inhibitors sorafenib and lenvatinib as comparator drugs. Bayer brought sorafenib to market as Nexavar and Eisai sells lenvatinib as Lenvima. When BMS began the Phase III trial in 2019, sorafenib was the standard of care but immunotherapy-based combinations have beaten the kinase inhibitor in recent years.