Dyne’s Upsized IPO Brings In $233M for Muscle Disorders Drug R&D

Dyne Therapeutics, a company developing genetic medicines for rare muscular disorders, has raised $233 million in an IPO that topped the preclinical-stage biotech’s projections.

Late Wednesday, Dyne priced its offering of about 12.3 million shares at $19 each. The Waltham, MA-based biotech had previously planned to sell 10.3 million shares in the range of $16 to $18 per share. Those shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Thursday under the stock symbol “DYN.”

Dyne is developing drugs that employ a proprietary technology intended to overcome one of the hurdles to treating muscular disorders: getting enough medicine into muscle tissue. The company achieves this by linking its therapeutic payload of nucleic acids to an antibody that targets a protein abundant on the surface of muscle cells.

The most advanced Dyne program is in development as a treatment for myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1), a rare inherited disorder caused by mutant RNA. The company says its drug is intended to reduce the levels of mutant precursor RNA, which will in turn allow a cell to make proteins normally. The hope is that his approach will stop or even reverse the progression of DM1.

The Dyne IPO comes a month after the company closed a $115 million Series B round of funding. According to the IPO prospectus, Dyne plans to spend about $225 million to continue its research, including the preclinical studies needed to advance its programs to human testing. Another $30 million is earmarked for continued development of its proprietary technology, dubbed “Force.”

In other biotech IPO news this week, the public markets welcomed Metacrine (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MTCR]]), which raised  $85 million. The San Diego-based company priced its offering of about 6.5 million shares at $13 each, the middle of its projected $12 to $14 per share price range. Those shares began trading Wednesday.

Metacrine will use the IPO cash to fund clinical development of its drugs for gastrointestinal and liver diseases, including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). The lead Metacrine drug, MET409, targets the farnesoid X receptor (FXR), which plays a role in modulating these diseases. The once-daily pill has produced Phase 1b proof of concept data in NASH that show improvements in biological indicators of the fatty liver disease after 12 weeks of treatment, according to Metacrine. A second Metacrine drug, MET642, is also designed to target FXR but the company says that in preclinical research, this compound displayed more potent engagement of its target and offered better pharmaceutical properties.

According to the IPO prospectus, Metacrine plans to spend $10 million to fund a Phase 2a study testing MET409 in combination with an antidiabetic agent that the company says has shown clinical benefits in NASH. The company has earmarked $15 million for a Phase 2a test of MET642 in NASH. Metacrine also plans to use the IPO cash to begin a Phase 2a test of either MET409 or MET642 in ulcerative colitis, and to begin a Phase 2b monotherapy study testing one of those drugs in NASH.

Here’s more on the origins of Metacrine, which launched in 2015 with technology licensed from the Salk Institute.

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