The Stanford spinout has gone public following a $238m IPO, after revealing that the university was also among the series B investors.
Graphite Bio, a US-based gene editing spinout of Stanford University, went public on Friday following a $238m initial public offering.
The spinout issued 14 million shares priced at $17 each and is now listed on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol GRPH, pushing its valuation to $1.2bn on the first day of trading. Shares are worth $22.70 as of the time of writing.
Graphite Bio is working on therapies that repair genetic defects at the source, precisely deliver genetic cargo and engineer new cellular effector functions. It is focused on serious conditions, and its lead asset, GPH101, is aimed at sickle cell disease.
The company will spend approximately $90m of proceeds on a phase 1/2 trial for GPH101 and $80m on its current discovery programmes.
Some $40m each will fund investigational new drug-enabling studies and potential phase 1/2 trials for treatments aimed at X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency and Gaucher disease.
Graphite Bio raised $150m in a series B round co-led by RA Capital Management and Rock Springs Capital in March 2021. In its prospectus, the spinout disclosed that Stanford University also invested as part of that round.
Cormorant Asset Management, Deerfield Management, Federated Hermes Kaufmann Funds, Fidelity, Janus Henderson Investors, Logos Capital, OrbiMed, Perceptive Advisors, Surveyor Capital, Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, Samsara BioCapital and Versant Ventures filled out the lineup of series B investors.
Graphite Bio had launched in September 2020 with $45m of series A funding co-led by Versant Ventures and Samsara BioCapital.
Versant owns a 29% stake following the offering, down from 38.7%. Samsara’s stake has been diluted from 16.5% to 12.4%, while co-founder Matthew Porteus’s shareholding has been reduced from 8.4% to 6.3%.
Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Cowen and SVB Leerink are the joint book-running managers for the offering. They have been granted a greenshoe option to purchase up to an additional 2.1 million shares.
