Gaithersburg’s NexImmune Inc. has filed for its initial public offering.
The biotech, which is developing immunotherapy treatments for cancer, will look to raise $86.25 million with this offering, according to a preliminary prospectus filed Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It plans to publicly trade under the ticker symbol “NEXI” on the Nasdaq Global Market.
The company did not disclose an estimated opening price or date for the public offering.
NexImmune said the IPO's net proceeds would help it advance its two product candidates, now in early-stage clinical trials for acute myeloid leukemia and multiple myeloma, and develop its preclinical pipeline, which includes candidates for solid tumor and autoimmune diseases. The proceeds would also fund manufacturing activities, further use of its technology platform, as well as working capital and general corporate purposes, the company said.
NexImmune declined through a spokesman to comment for this story, citing the quiet period that precedes an IPO.
The company, whose immunotherapy approach taps the body’s own T-cells, or white blood cells, to spark an immune response, has no products to market or revenue yet — similar to many biotechs in its stage of development. It suffered a net loss of $21.9 million for the first nine months of 2020 and closed September with about $2 million in cash and cash equivalents, according to its filing. The business also received a $843,619 loan under the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program in April.
NexImmune ended 2020 with 44 employees and said it expects to “add a significant number of additional managerial, operational, sales, marketing, financial and other personnel” as it transitions into a publicly traded company.
The business has already made some executive changes less than a month into 2021. This week, the company appointed Dr. Robert Knight, an alum of Gilead Sciences-owned Kite Pharma and New Jersey biotech behemoth Celgene Corp. (NASDAQ: CELG), as its chief medical officer. And earlier this month, NexImmune hired Dr. Jerome Zeldis, a biopharma veteran, as executive vice president of research and development and Dr. Jeffrey Weber, an immunotherapy expert, as chief scientific adviser and chair of its scientific advisory board.
NexImmune had raised a total $42.77 million in funding as of November 2019, according to PitchBook.
The biotech was founded in June 2011 and acquired in February 2017 by some of the biggest names in pharma. That group was led by Dr. Sol Barer, chairman of U.S.-Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: TEVA) and co-founder and former CEO of Celgene.
Scott Carmer has led NexImmune as its CEO since March 2018, after joining the company four years prior as its first chief business officer and later shifting to the chief operating officer slot. He’d previously led commercial operations at MedImmune, following posts at Genentech, Amgen and GlaxoSmithKline.
NexImmune’s planned IPO follows a handful of other public debuts locally, including those of Silver Spring’s Aziyo Biologics (NASDAQ: AZYO), Gaithersburg’s Viela Bio (NASDAQ: VIE), Beltsville’s NextCure (NASDAQ: NXTC), Reston’s SOC Telemed (NASDAQ: TLMD) and more beyond the biotech, life sciences and health care arenas.
