Icosavax, a US-based vaccine developer that counts pharmaceutical firm Sanofi as an investor, has filed for an initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market with a $100m placeholder target.
Founded in 2017, Icosavax is working on vaccines for infectious diseases that cause life-threatening respiratory illnesses. Its product pipeline includes IVX-A12 and IVX-411, candidates aimed at respiratory syncytial virus and Sars-CoV-2, respectively.
Proceeds from the offering would go towards the continued development of its pipeline, progressing IVX-A12 through a phase 2b clinical trial and IVX-411 through phase 1/2 and 2 trials.
Icosavax closed a $100m series B round in April 2021 led by RA Capital Management and backed by pharmaceutical firm Sanofi’s investment arm, Sanofi Ventures, as well as Janus Henderson Investors, Perceptive Advisors, Viking Global Investors, Cormorant Asset Management, Omega Funds, Open Philanthropy and Surveyor Capital.
Qiming Venture Partners USA, Adams Street Partners and ND Capital (formerly known as NanoDimension) also took part in the series B round, having already backed a $51m series A in late 2019 together with Sanofi Ventures.
The company disclosed in the IPO filing that the father of its chief scientific officer, Douglas Holtzman, is also an investor, having purchased series 1 convertible stock in 2018 that automatically converted to series A shares the following year.
Icosavax’s largest shareholder ahead of the IPO is Qiming Venture Partners USA, with a 13% stake, followed by Adams Street (12.8%), RA Capital Management (12.3%), Sanofi (12.2%) and ND Capital (10.8%).
Jefferies, Cowen and Company, Evercore Group and William Blair and Company have been appointed underwriters for the offering.
The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.
