Vedolizumab

Top of the list of spending priorities for the IPO proceeds is Odyssey’s lead RIPK2 inhibitor, dubbed OD-001. \n Odyssey Therapeutics has become the latest biotech to voyage to the public markets via an upsized $304 million IPO this morning. The autoimmune- and inflammatory-disease-focused company first disclosed an ambition to sail to the Nasdaq back in January 2025 as part of a mini-wave of like-minded drug developers. But the company abandoned this endeavor five months later as the IPO waters grew stormier, with Odyssey’s leadership concluding that the move was “not in the best interests of the company … at this time.” Odyssey’s second venture has proved more successful, with the biotech today offering 15.5 million shares—above the 13.2 million shares it had predicted earlier this week. With the shares priced at $18—the top end of its anticipated range—the company expects to bring in gross proceeds of $304 million from the IPO. However, this figure also includes an adjacent private placement of 1.4 million shares to an affiliate of TPG Life Sciences Innovations. This is already well above the $205.2 million the company had been predicting on Monday. The haul could rise by around $41.8 million if underwriters fully take up their option to buy an additional 2.3 million shares at the same price. Odyssey CEO Gary Glick, Ph.D., said the company had made a second attempt to IPO after deciding that the “public markets were really the best way to access the capital.” Top of the list of spending priorities for the IPO proceeds is Odyssey’s lead RIPK2 inhibitor, dubbed OD-001. The company has earmarked $135 million for phase 2 trials for ulcerative colitis as a monotherapy and in combination with Takeda’s Entyvio. The biotech is “pushing very hard” to get OD-001 approved in either late 2030 or 2031, Glick told Fierce in an interview.  “If you follow inflammatory bowel disease, the treatment paradigms are now moving [to] combination studies,” the CEO explained. “Having an oral, safe, effective molecule puts us in a very unique position, so we’d like to be able to use the capital that we can access from the public markets to … simultaneously finance these combination studies.” The biotech has also said it will use $50 million to take its preclinical SLC15A4 program into a phase 1/2a trial. Odyssey believes inhibiting SLC15A4 has the potential to be more effective than addressing TLR7/8—a popular target for investigational autoimmune drugs—and expects to test this program for various types of lupus and other B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases. Because the SLC15A4 program is designed to modulate pathogenic B cells, Glick said the therapy could offer “CAR-T-like effects, but in a pill.” Beyond those two programs, Glick said Odyssey has a “pretty deep pipeline,” namechecking a preclinical regulatory T cell-specific tumor necrosis factor receptor 2 agonist. “There are going to be multiple programs in development,” he said. “So really the only way to finance what is a broad portfolio is the public markets.” Glick previously spun immune-oncology startup Lycera out of his University of Michigan lab before later licensing Lycera’s assets to Celgene. Aside from Odyssey, Glick cofounded and led IFM Therapeutics, which he departed in 2019 after deals with Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis. He also cofounded and ran Scorpion Therapeutics, which was later acquired by Eli Lilly for $2.5 billion in January 2025. “I\'ve been very fortunate over the course of my career to launch and lead a number of successful companies,” he told Fierce. “What I learned there was how to execute efficiently across a relatively small portfolio—in some cases one program, some cases two programs,” Glick continued. “The vision behind Odyssey was really to take those learnings, scale that and create not what is a typical biotech company like I\'ve done in the past, but really, I would call it a little large pharma with a biotech sort of execution focused in immunology.” While Glick’s other companies had often attracted a buyer relatively early on, the Odyssey CEO said today’s IPO means he plans to now “go further into development.”  In fact, Odyssey would consider heading all the way to commercialization itself “should the opportunity present itself in the right program and the right molecule,” he added. “I’ve been very fortunate in my past to put molecules in the hands of outstanding partners,” Glick said. “The vision of this is to do something different: create a lasting I&I company that can really change the standard of care for patients.” Odyssey began its journey in 2021 with OrbiMed as the company’s biggest backer. Carl Gordon, Ph.D., a managing partner at the venture capital firm, called Glick offered to back his next project. “He said he would fund whatever I wanted to do,” Glick remembered. “He and then SR One joining him very early on as two investors really backed the vision to essentially … create something different, something broad, something that could be truly transformative and helpful for patients.” Odyssey has had no problems bringing in the megarounds. As well as the $218 million that the company launched with, the biotech has raised a $168 million series B in 2022, a $101 million series C in 2023 and a $213 million series D in September 2025. Of the combined $726.5 million that Odyssey has raised to date, the biotech entered April with $175.7 million still in the bank. The biotech’s stock will list on the Nasdaq Friday morning under the ticker “ODTX.” The company is following in the wake of Seaport Therapeutics and Hemab Therapeutics, which went public a week ago with IPOs over $250 million and $300 million, respectively, to fund their depression and blood-clotting pipelines.  Last month, obesity biotech Kailera Therapeutics made history with an upsized $625 million offering that served as welcome sign that the IPO window remains open. After debuting at $16, Kailera’s stock closed trading Thursday at a healthy $22.47. 

The latest biotech to test a reopening IPO market, Odyssey Therapeutics raised $304 million in an upsized offering Friday, marking a successful second attempt to go public after withdrawing its earlier listing plans last year. The Boston-based company, which focuses on autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, sold 15.5 million shares at $18 apiece, more than the 13.2 million shares it had proposed earlier in the week and at the top end of its price range. Odyssey had initially filed for an IPO in early 2025 during a brief resurgence in biotech offerings, but scrapped the effort a few months later as market conditions cooled. It returned to the market this spring amid renewed investor appetite, joining a wave of recent listings. Avalyn Pharma last week raised roughly $300 million in a bumped-up offering, while Kailera Therapeutics pulled in $625 million in April, making it one of the sector's largest IPOs in recent memory. Odyssey's pipeline is centred on immune-mediated diseases, led by OD-001, an oral RIPK2 scaffolding inhibitor currently in Phase IIa testing for ulcerative colitis. Odyssey plans additional mid-stage studies evaluating the drug both as a monotherapy and together with Takeda's Entyvio (vedolizumab), with top-line results expected in the second half of 2027. Another small-molecule candidate, OD-002, targets SLC15A4 and is being developed for lupus and related autoimmune disorders, with Phase I/IIa testing planned for the first half of next year. It is also advancing earlier-stage protein therapeutics, including OD-003, a TNFR2 agonist being studied for systemic lupus erythematosus, atopic dermatitis and alopecia areata, as well as OD-004, a bispecific protein that antagonises TSLP and IL-33, aimed at asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.