WIKIMEDIA, KLIP GAMEEarly in 2012, executives at Chimerix, an antiviral developer based in Durham, NC, decided that the company was ready to move to the next level. Successful Phase 2 results from its lead drug candidate, CMX001, had the firm starting down the path to developing a clinical efficacy trial. “We were facing a moment in time where we needed to raise somewhere between $80 million and $100 million to run a Phase 3 trial,” said Kenneth Moch, the company’s CEO. Although Chimerix had already raised around $160 million during the last decade—between venture capital and government grants—funds to support Phase 3 studies are not easy to come by. The public markets, however, could offer a much larger pool of capital to dip into.
This April, Chimerix announced it was going public at an initial offering of $14 per share. Initial public offerings (IPOs) are no small feat, particularly for biotech companies. In the years preceding Chimerix’s IPO, the public market was a tough nut to crack for such firms. Yet so far this year, nearly 30 other biotechs have joined Chimerix in going public. “There hasn't been an IPO window of this magnitude since the 2000 time frame,” said Luke Evnin, the managing director at MPM Capital, a venture capital firm focused on the life sciences. “It’s been more than a decade since we’ve had access to capital like we have now in the public markets.”
A number of factors have contributed to this current wave of biotech ...
