Prime Medicine Raises $175 Million in Upsized IPO

Preclinical genetic medicine biotech Prime Medicine raised $175 million in an upsized initial public offering of 10.3 million shares of its common stock at $17.00 per share.

Photo: David Liu, co-founder of Prime Medicine

Prime’s IPO ended a five-month drought of such offerings by companies developing therapies for rare diseases. Seventeen therapeutics developers, seven of which have rare disease pipelines, have completed IPOs in 2022 to date, a very slow year for such offerings compared to the 88 therapeutics IPOs to date in 2021.

All of the shares are being offered by Prime Medicine. In addition, the underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to 1.5 million additional shares of common stock, less underwriting discounts and commissions. Shares will trade on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol “PRME.”

Prime Medicine launched in July 2021 with $315 million in financing to advance a gene editing platform that it likens to a DNA word processor to “search and replace” disease-causing genetic sequences at their precise location in the genome, without resulting in double-strand DNA breaks that cause unwanted cellular changes. new class of differentiated, one-time, curative genetic therapies to address the widest spectrum of diseases.

Prime editing technology, developed by co-founder David Liu and his group at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, is a next-generation gene editing technology that acts like a DNA word processor to “search and replace” disease-causing genetic sequences at their precise location in the genome, without resulting in double-strand DNA breaks that cause unwanted cellular changes. The company says it has the potential to address more than 90 percent of known disease-causing mutations, and works in a variety of dividing and non-dividing primary human cells, as well as in animals. Prime editing has been shown by multiple independent laboratories to make genome edits with high fidelity, making edits precisely at the desired location with minimal or no editing in other parts of the genome. Together, these features overcome several technical barriers attributed to earlier gene editing technologies.

Author: Rare Daily Staff