NextCure files for $92M IPO to advance Cancer Immunotherapy Pipeline

April 29, 2019

NextCure, a clinical-stage biotech in Beltsville, MD developing cancer immunotherapies, announced the terms for its IPO that could raise up to $92M by offering 5M common shares at $14 – $16. The company has applied to trade on NASDAQ under the symbol, “NXTC”, and would be the first big IPO for the BioHealth Capital Region this year.

Founded in 2015 by CEO Michael Richman, who previously led Amplimmune to an acquisition by AstraZeneca in 2013, NextCure has made substantial progress in just three years. A number of Richman’s ‘A-Team’ from Amplimune have joined him in this new venture, most notably Chief Science Officer Sol Langermann, Ph.D., Chief Development Officer James B. Bingham, Ph.D., Senior VP of Research Linda Liu, Ph.D. and the Vice President of Business Development Sebastien Maloveste, Ph.D. Many other key personnel also have ties to Amplimmune which signals that this team believes in the executive leadership and is here to make an impact on the field of immune-oncology and on the lives of many patients who are fighting cancer.

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Bolstering an experienced team with a proven track record of success together, and an advanced technology platform, FIND-IOTM, that attracted over $100M in early investment and a big pharma partnership from Eli Lilly, NextCure may well be the next big success story for Maryland’s growing biotech cluster.

The scientific founded, Lieping Chen, M.D., Ph.D., is a pioneer in the field of lymphocyte co-stimulation and co-inhibition, and was the first to discover “co-stimulation of tumor immunity” and to use co-stimulatory molecules to treat cancer and other diseases, the comp. The company views the immune system holistically and, rather than target one specific immune cell type, they focus on understanding biological pathways, the interactions of cells and the role each interaction plays in an immune response, through their proprietary FIND-IO platform.

The company currently has multiple development programs and two oncology product candidates in its pipeline.

NextCure Immunotherapy Product Development Pipeline includes NC218 in clinical phase 1/2 and NC410 in preclinical research.
NextCure Product Development Pipeline (www.nextcure.com)

The company’s lead drug candidate in phase 1/2 clinical trials is NC318, an immunotherapeutic that targets the immunomodulatory receptor Siglec-15 for the treatment of advanced or metastatic solid tumors.

The company’s secondary drug candidate NC410 is an immunotherapeutic that inhibits immune suppression mediated by an immune modulator to “restore normal immune function in multiple immune cells, including T cells and myeloid cells, resulting in activation of T cells and anti-tumor immunity.”

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