Another biotech startup revealed plans Friday evening for an initial public offering, making it the sixth startup to list new shares or file for an IPO in the last two weeks.
CAMP4 Therapeutics, a six-year-old startup founded by the Whitehead Institute’s Richard Young and Harvard Medical School’s Leonard Zon, plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker $CAMP, according to an SEC filing.
The Cambridge, MA-based biotech is working on regulatory RNAs, or regRNAs. The startup is creating antisense oligonucleotides to bind to regRNA and control protein expression to regulate genetic diseases.
CAMP4’s initial focus is on metabolic and CNS diseases. Its first candidate, CMP-CPS-001, is in Phase 1 testing and is being looked at for urea cycle disorders, an inherited metabolic disease that impairs the body’s ability to remove waste. CAMP4 expects initial data in the first quarter of next year.
The filing is almost certain to be read as yet another sign of optimism for otherwise chilly biotech markets, following a long-awaited interest rate cut earlier this week by the Federal Reserve that’s jolted the stock market to all-time highs.
The company has a license agreement and discovery deal with Fulcrum Therapeutics and an R&D pact for up to three ASOs with Eli Lilly, according to its SEC filing. In early 2020, it also disclosed a tie-up with Biogen for mapping the brain.
CAMP4 did not disclose how much it expects to raise in the proposed IPO. It spent $19 million on R&D in the first half of this year, a $1 million decrease over the year prior. It had $12.6 million in cash and equivalents at the end of June.
The company’s last disclosed financing was a $100 million Series B in July 2022.
Enavate Sciences is the biggest shareholder and owns about 19% of the shares. Enavate is also one of the largest shareholders of another biotech that unveiled its IPO ambitions earlier this week, the respiratory drug developer Upstream Bio.
5AM Ventures; Polaris Partners; Northpond Ventures; Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s AH Bio; HarbourVest Partners; and Kaiser Permanente all own more than 5% of CAMP4.
Leading the 64-employee biotech is Josh Mandel-Brehm, who’s been at the company since the beginning and previously worked on business development at Biogen and Sanofi.