Bambusa Therapeutics has upsized its IPO, selling more shares at the midpoint of its target range to gross $168.9 million for bispecific R&D. But Aspen Neuroscience underperformed expectations, hitting the bottom end of its target range and selling slightly fewer shares than expected.
Boston-based Bambusa originally filed to sell 9.4 million shares for $15 to $17. At the midpoint of the price range, the IPO would have grossed $150.4 million. By breezing past that target, the biotech has secured more cash to advance a pipeline led by BBT001, a bispecific that targets IL-4Rα and IL-31 to treat conditions including eczema. Bambusa is moving BBT001 toward a phase 2b trial.
BBT001 and other assets in Bambusa’s pipeline originated at Biotheus, the Chinese drug developer that BioNTech acquired for $800 million in 2024 to secure full rights to a PD-L1xVEGF-A bispecific antibody. Members of the leadership team, as well as many employees, previously worked together at BioNTech.
San Diego-based Aspen originally aimed to sell 9.4 million shares for between $15 and $17 apiece. Like Bambusa’s offering, the IPO would have grossed $150.4 million at the midpoint of the range. Ultimately, Aspen sold 9.375 million shares at $15 each, raising about $140.6 million in gross proceeds.
Beyond raising capital to advance its pipeline, Aspen sees the IPO as an opportunity to draw attention to its work in Parkinson’s disease.
“This was more than just a financing. This was also an opportunity to add visibility and raise awareness more broadly for the urgent unmet medical need in Parkinson's,” Aspen CEO Damien McDevitt, Ph.D., told Fierce.
Before finalizing the terms of the offering, Aspen outlined plans to invest $110 million in a phase 3 trial of sasineprocel in Parkinson’s disease. Sasineprocel is an autologous induced pluripotent stem cell-based therapy designed to replace patients’ lost dopaminergic neurons with dopaminergic neuron precursor cells. The phase 3 trial will enroll people with sporadic and genetic Parkinson’s.
McDevitt expressed confidence in the program's prospects, pointing to the clinical data generated so far.
“Because of the data that we're seeing already, we're moving into phase three,” McDevitt said.
The pricing of the Aspen and Bambusa offerings coincided with NuvOx Therapeutics amending its IPO paperwork. NuvOx still aims to offer 2.86 million shares, priced between $6 and $8. The biotech plans to use the money to complete a phase 2b clinical trial for a form of brain cancer and fund another mid-stage study in acute respiratory distress syndrome.
NuvOx’s revised IPO filing features updated data from the phase 2b brain cancer trial, which has treated four more patients than when the biotech submitted its previous paperwork. The company also provided financial results for the first nine months of the year, compared to the first six months in the earlier filing.
Editor's note: This story was updated Oct. 30, 2026, to include comments from Aspen Neuroscience CEO Damien McDevitt.