MBX Biosciences files intention to go public
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MBX Biosciences Inc. is a company in a hurry.
Just three weeks after announcing it had raised $63.5 million in a round of private funding, the Carmel-based company has filed paperwork to go public.
The five-year-old, clinical-stage drugmaker has already raised more than $213 million to develop therapeutics to treat rare endocrine disorders, a huge amount for a startup. But going public would give it the potential to raise significantly more capital to push its drug candidates into late-stage testing.
The company was silent about the initial public offering, which it filed Friday afternoon with the Securities and Exchange Commission. MBX did not issue a press release, and as of Monday afternoon, its website did not have any mention of the IPO. CEO Kent Hawryluk declined to comment on the filing, citing regulatory guidelines.
MBX did not say how much it expected to raise in its IPO, leaving that section of its filing blank. IPO research firm Renaissance Capital reported that MBX was seeking to raise up to $100 million with the offering.
As of June 30, the company had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $55.3 million, beyond the $63.5 million in gross proceeds from its Series C financing, announced earlier this month.
But the company has shown it wants to move quickly and hire plenty of talent. As of Aug. 15, it had 36 full-time employees, of which 10 have medical or doctoral degrees. Twenty-three employees are engaged in research and development and 13 are engaged in general and administrative work.
The company said it planned to use the proceeds to advance the development of its drug candidates, including MBX 2019 into Phase 3 clinical testing and MBX 1416 into Phase 2 testing. It also wants to advance a third experimental drug, MBX 4291, from preclinical development to clinical testing.
The drugs are being tested for the treatment of endocrine and metabolic disorders, such as hypoparathyroidism, post-bariatric hypoglycemia and obesity.
The company, which has yet to record any revenue, has rung up net losses of $661,307, based on losses of $353,237 in 2021 and $308,070 in 2022, the last two years disclosed in the filing.
The IPO registration follows a spate of other Indiana life science and health care IPOs in recent years, including Elanco Animal Health, Syra Health, Point Biopharma and Assembly Biosciences.
MBX was founded in 2019 by Indiana University chemistry researcher and serial entrepreneur Richard DiMarchi and his longtime partner, Hawryluk, the company president and CEO.
DiMarchi, the company’s scientific co-founder, is no longer on the board of directors, but serves as an external advisor through a continuing research agreement between the company and his IU-Bloomington laboratory.
DiMarchi and Hawryluk worked together on two previous Indiana startups, Marcadia Biotech and MB2, which developed technology for metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.
Marcardia was later bought by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche. Denmark-based Novo Nordisk later bought MB2.
DiMarchi has set up at least five companies since retiring from Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. in 2003 as group vice president for biotechnology research and product development. He has more than 100 patents and has published more than 150 scientific papers.
His other startups include Ambryx, Assembly Biosciences and Calibrium. All of the startups were sold, reaping more than $500 million for founders and investors.