Scribe Therapeutics joins the IPO queue

Scribe Therapeutics has become the latest biotech to announce plans to list on the Nasdaq, in what is being seen as a test of the appetite among investors for earlier-stage drug developers.

Scribe – which counts new Nobel Prize for Chemistry winner Jennifer Doudna among its founders – is developing in vivo CRISPR-based therapies for cardiometabolic diseases, particularly atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), and has a lead candidate in early-stage clinical testing.

The proposed IPO – which has a placeholder value of $75 million, according to a Renaissance Capital report – comes amid what is shaping up to be a strong year for IPOs in 2026, but bucks the trend somewhat in that most of those that have crossed the line so far have involved biotechs with late-stage candidates and a fairly short timeline to market.

Alameda, California-based Scribe's lead drug candidate is STX-115, designed to epigenetically silence PCSK9 and reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol without permanently altering DNA, and is currently in a first-in-human trial in Australia, with data due next year.

Preclinical studies have pointed to remarkable durability for the drug, with 50% or greater LDL-C reduction in non-human primates maintained for around 18 months after a single administration.

Scribe's platform technology focuses on CRISPR-CasX, rather than the more common CRISPR-Cas9, and Scribe contends that this can generate CRISPR drugs with improved activity, specificity, and deliverability.

STX-115 is followed by two other candidates – STX-1200 and STX-1400 - which apply the company's X-editing (XE) technology to two other well-established drug targets in cardiometabolic diseases, respectively Lp(a) and triglycerides. These are scheduled to start first-in-human clinical testing in 2027 and 2028, and were recently awarded more than $25 million in funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

"Focusing a new class of genetic medicines on these three targets has the potential to address the overwhelming majority of lipid-mediated ASCVD risk, providing a long-term solution for cardiovascular health and reshaping how this disease is treated and ultimately prevented," according to Scribe's just-filed prospectus with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).

Scribe was founded in 2017 and plans to list on the Nasdaq under the SCTX ticker symbol. It had cash reserves of around $50 million as of the end of March.