Generate's IPO gets over the line, raising $400m

Generate Biomedicines has completed its IPO, raising an impressive $400 million that makes it the largest listing for a biotech on the Nasdaq so far this year.

Incubated by investment group Flagship Pioneering, Generate uses AI to tease out the three-dimensional structure of human proteins, including how they fold, to determine their function and design drugs that can alter their activity. The platform has earned the company alliances with Novartis and Amgen, worth up to $1 billion-plus and $1.9 billion, respectively.

The IPO, which saw 25 million shares sold at $16, in the middle of the $15 to $17 range predicted by the company, continues a run of new listings in the US that point to 2026 being a rebound year after a lacklustre 2024 and 2025. Trading in the shares, under the GENB symbol, is due to start when the markets open in the US later today.

Somerville, Massachusetts-based Generate said it will use around $300 million of the proceeds to develop its lead candidate GB-0895, a long-acting anti-TSLP antibody, in patients with severe asthma whose symptoms are inadequately controlled using current therapies.

Two phase 3 trials of the antibody – SOLAIRIA‑1 and SOLAIRIA‑2 – started in December and will compare a twice-yearly dose of GB-0895 to placebo in a population of around 1,600 patients.

Generate is hoping that dosing will differentiate it from other biologic therapies for severe uncontrolled asthma, such as Amgen's TSLP-directed Tezspire (tezepelumab), Sanofi/Regeneron's IL-4 and IL-13 inhibitor Dupixent (dupilumab), and IL-5 blockers like GSK's Nucala (mepolizumab), which are dosed once a month.

If it makes it to market, it will have to compete with GSK's recently approved, twice-yearly IL-5 inhibitor Exdensur (depemokimab), already approved for severe asthma with type 2 inflammation, which GSK thinks could become a £3 billion-a-year product.

The other $100 million or so from the IPO is earmarked for completing an ongoing phase 1b trial of GB-0895 in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and to advance two cancer drugs, MMAE-directed antibody GB-4362 and MUC16-targeting cell therapy GB-5267, into human testing.

Generate's raise comes after strong debuts on the Nasdaq for a string of biotechs – including Eikon Therapeutics ($381 million), AgomAb Therapeutics, Aktis Oncology ($318 million), and Veradermics ($256 million) – since the start of the year.

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