Xilio Therapeutics, a US-based cancer immunotherapy developer backed by pharmaceutical firms Takeda, Merck & Co, Ipsen and Merck Group, floated on Friday in an initial public offering sized at almost $118m.
The company issued approximately 7.35 million shares on the Nasdaq Global Market priced at the foot of the offering’s $16 to $18 range. They opened at $15.00 on Friday and closed at the IPO price of $16.00, giving it a market capitalisation of nearly $429m.
Joint book-running managers Morgan Stanley, Cowen and Guggenheim Securities and lead manager Raymond James have the 30-day option to buy up to 1.1 million additional shares, potentially lifting the size of the offering to over $135m.
Xilio is engineering novel molecules, including cytokines and other biologics, designed to localise activity within the tumour microenvironment without systemic effect, resulting in potential enhanced anti-tumour activity.
Proceeds from the offering will be used to advance three of Xilio’s drug candidates – XTX101, XTX202 and XTX301 – through phase 1 and potentially the beginning of phase 1/2 clinical trials.
Takeda and Merck & Co backed Xilio’s $95m series C round in February 2021 through Takeda Ventures and MRL Ventures Fund. The round was led by Rock Springs Capital and included Atlas Venture, Bain Capital Life Sciences, Deerfield Management, RA Capital Management, RiverVest Venture Partners and SV Health Investors.
Takeda Ventures had previously led a $100.5m series B round for the company in March 2020 that also featured MRL Ventures, Merck Group’s M Ventures subsidiary and and Ipsen unit Ipsen Ventures.
Investment and financial services group Fidelity’s F-Prime Capital also took part in the 2020 round, as did fellow existing investor Atlas Venture, Bay City Capital, RiverVest Venture Partners, SV Health Investors and Solasta Ventures. It increased the total raised by Xilio to over $130m.
Takeda Ventures’ 7.6% stake was diluted to 5.5% in the offering while MRL Ventures came out with 3.7%, down from 5.1%. Xilio’s other notable investors are Atlas Venture (a 9.6% stake post-IPO), F-Prime (7.2%), Bain Capital and Deerfield (5.7% each), SV Health (4.9%) and RiverVest (4.5%).
