US-based cell therapy developer Caribou Biosciences is going public today in a $304m initial public offering representing an exit for corporate investors Corteva, AbbVie, Novartis and Heritage Medical Systems.
The company increased the number of shares in the offering from 17 million to 19 million and priced them at the top of the IPO’s $14 to $16 range. It is floating on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and the share price gives it a valuation of almost $910m.
Caribou is leveraging its Crispr gene editing platform to develop treatments for haematologic malignancies and solid tumours. It is allocating at least $90m of the IPO proceeds to clinical development of CB-010, which is in a phase 1 clinical trial for refractory B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Some $80m will support Investigational New Drug-enabling studies for two more drug candidates, CB-011 and CB-012, in addition to the potential launch of clinical trials.
At least $55m will be channelled into research and development activities for the company’s genome-editing technologies and solid tumour-targeted cell therapy development platform.
Pharmaceutical firm Novartis joined investment and financial services group Fidelity’s F-Prime Capital subsidiary (then known as Fidelity Biosciences), 5 Prime Ventures and Mission Bay Capital to provide $11m in series A funding for Caribou in 2015.
F-Prime returned the following year to lead a $30m series B round that included Novartis, healthcare provider Heritage Medical Systems, 5 Prime Ventures, Mission Bay Capital, Anterra Capital, Maverick Ventures and Pontifax Agtech.
Heritage Medical and pharmaceutical company AbbVie’s investment arm, AbbVie Ventures, took part in Caribou’s $115m series C round in March this year co-led by $20m each from Farallon Capital Management, PFM Health Sciences and Ridgeback Capital Investments.
The round included Leukaemia and Lymphoma Society’s Therapy Acceleration Program, Maverick Ventures, Pontifax AgTech, Adage Capital Partners, Avego Bioscience Capital, Avidity Partners, Invus, Janus Henderson Investors, LifeSci Venture Partners, Monashee Investment Management, Point72 and funds managed by Tekla Capital Management.
F-Prime remains the company’s largest external shareholder, the owner of a 5.9% stake diluted from 9.1%. Its other notable investors are Corteva (5.6% post-IPO), James and Jennifer Doudna Cate Living Trust (4.2%), Farallon, PFM and Ridgeback (3.7%).
Joint book-running managers BofA Securities, Citigroup and SVB Leerink have the 30-day option to acquire another 2.85 million shares at the IPO price, potentially lifting its size to approximately $350m.
