Sionna Therapeutics is eyeing a $156 million IPO as the cystic-fibrosis-focused biotech looks to take its lead candidate into phase 2.
The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company already unveiled last month its intention to go public but has now given a sense of how much it hopes to raise from the offering. The current plan is to make available 8.8 million shares priced between $16 and $18 apiece, according to a Feb. 3 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Should the final share price fall in the middle of this range, Sionna expects net proceeds from the IPO to reach $135.3 million—or $156.2 million if underwriters fully take up their 30-day option to buy an additional 1.3 million shares at the same price.
Sionna is working out its IPO plans days after obesity biotech Metsera and renal and metabolic-focused Maze Therapeutics both listed on the Nasdaq with offerings of $275 million and $140 million, respectively.
Sionna’s main focus is advancing a combination of an NBD1 stabilizer and complementary modulator through phase 1 and phase 2a and into phase 2b using the IPO funds. The biotech is yet to pick which molecules to include in the combination. AbbVie could benefit from the choice, with Sionna agreeing to give the Big Pharma up to $360 million in milestones and rights of first negotiation related to three CFTR modulators that the biotech picked up last year from the pharma.
Sionna wants to test its lead candidate in combination with Vertex’s Trikafta, but it also plans to study the molecule with its own CFTR modulators.
In its original IPO filing, the biotech acknowledged some of the challenges it may face if it runs trials that require people to stop taking standard of care. Sionna said AbbVie terminated part of a phase 2 trial that planned to test a CFTR potentiator and corrector—which Sionna had licensed from the pharma—after deeming it “not enrollable due to, among other reasons, the increasing availability of Trikafta.”