Virginia Tech spinout Landos Biopharma priced its shares at $16 to raise $100m and will use proceeds to advance the development of two treatments for inflammatory bowel disease.

Landos Biopharma, a US-based autoimmune disease treatments developer based on research at Virginia Tech, issued nearly 6.3 million shares priced at $16 on Wednesday to raise $100m in its initial public offering.
The pricing marks the midpoint of a $15 to $17 range and gave Landos a market value of $650m. It began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market yesterday using the ticker symbol LABP, with shares dropping to $12.50 at close.
Founded in 2017, Landos is focused on inflammatory bowel disease and has two programmes in clinical trials, BT-11 and NX-13, that are aimed at Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
It is also exploring applications for the assets in other conditions and has additional discovery and preclinical programmes for diseases such as Lupus, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s and rheumatoid arthritis.
Landos is led by chairman, president and chief executive Josep Bassaganya-Riera, who was a professor of immunology at Virginia Tech until May 2020. Raquel Hontecillas-Magarzo, an associate professor at Virginia Tech, is Landos’ chief scientific officer.
The two have been collaborating since at least 2002 at the Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory, where Bassaganya-Riera is president and founding director and Hontecillas-Magarzo is the co-director.
A total of $55m of proceeds from the IPO have been allocated to the development of BT-11, and another $20m will support the development of NX-13.
Landos completed a $60m series B round co-led by RTW Investments and Perceptive Advisors in 2019 with participation from spinout-focused investment firm Osage University Partners (OUP), venture capital firm PBM Capital and undisclosed new investors.
Perceptive Advisors took part through its Xontogeny Venture and Life Sciences funds, having already injected $10m in series A financing in 2017.
Perceptive’s stake has been diluted to 33.3% following the offering, with Xontogeny separately holding a 7.7% stake. OUP retains a 4.9% shareholding, while Bassaganya-Riera now owns 24.5% and RTW has a 9.1% stake.
JP Morgan, Jefferies and SVB Leerink are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering, while Raymond James is serving as lead manager. They have been granted a 30-day option to acquire up to an additional 937,500 shares.

Thierry Heles

Thierry Heles is the former editor-at-large of Global University Venturing and Global Corporate Venturing, and was the producer and host of the Beyond the Breakthrough podcast until December 2024.