Neumora boards IPO train as second PhIII biotech to file Nasdaq plans this week

The largely dormant biotech IPO market started sizzling Friday, with two Phase III drug developers sending in their pitches for Nasdaq debuts this fall.

After Friday’s closing bell, the neuroscience biotech Neumora submitted its paperwork to go public, a day after RayzeBio disclosed its plans by penciling in a $100 million offering. The two would join a little over a dozen biotechs to hit the Nasdaq this year.

Paul Berns

Just eight weeks into his post as Neumora’s president and CEO, Henry Gosebruch is hoping to woo public investors as the drug developer kick-starts a suite of clinical trials that are likely to bring multiple data readouts in quick succession, the recipe necessary for a listed biotech company in this market. Gosebruch stepped into the helm on July 3 after serving as AbbVie’s strategy chief.

This quarter, Neumora is starting the first in a trio of Phase III trials for its lead depression drug navacaprant. The biotech will quickly follow with a series of earlier-stage studies of other drugs across anxiety disorders, ALS and schizophrenia, executive chair Paul Berns told Endpoints News last month. Down the road, it also has ambitions to tackle Alzheimer’s, agitation in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and PTSD.

Neumora had about $400 million on its balance sheet at the end of last year, finance chief Joshua Pinto told Endpoints last month, which would be enough cash to bankroll the company into 2025, the year it plans to request approval for navacaprant. It employs about 125 people and has sites on the outskirts of Boston and the Bay Area.

Berns and team have built a stacked C-suite. In addition to Gosebruch and Pinto, the management includes co-founder and operating chief Carol Suh (who also co-founded Orbital Therapeutics), development leader Bill Aurora (ex-Dermira SVP) and medical leader Michael Gold (former CNS head at AbbVie), among others.

Bob Nelsen

ARCH Venture Partners formed the company a few years ago, with outspoken investor Bob Nelsen looking to create what the team originally dubbed the “Really Big Neuroscience Company.” Nelsen has called the brain “the final frontier” and “hardest to conquer.”  Additional investors include Abu Dhabi Growth Fund, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Amgen, Exor Ventures, F-Prime Capital, Invus, Mubadala Capital, Newpath Partners and Polaris Partners, among others.

The biotech is one of multiple drug developers looking to create new medicines for depression, schizophrenia and other neuro indications as rates of depression rise and existing treatments fail to help many people.

Sage Therapeutics and partner Biogen secured the first approval for a postpartum depression pill earlier this month, but the same treatment was rejected by the FDA for major depressive disorder. Axsome Therapeutics gained clearance 12 months ago for its depression treatment Auvelity. Meanwhile, Karuna Therapeutics is working on submitting its investigational schizophrenia drug to the FDA this quarter, hoping to set a new treatment paradigm for the condition.

If Neumora’s IPO is successful, it could pave the way for other neuro biotechs that have recently reeled in large financing rounds. One of those is Rapport Therapeutics, which emerged with $100 million in March and just as quickly raised a $150 million Series B disclosed this week to test former Janssen programs.

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