Rapport Therapeutics (RAPP), a Phase II biotech, priced its IPO at $17.00 – the mid-point of its $16.00-to-$18.00 range – on 8.0 million shares – the number in the prospectus – to raise $136.0 million, the company said on Thursday night, June 6, 2024. Shares of Rapport Therapeutics jumped $1.00 from their IPO price to open at $18.00 at 11:06 a.m. EDT Friday (June 7, 2024) in their NASDAQ debut. Volume was 390,769 shares, according to NASDAQ. (Editor’s Note: This column, published Thursday night, was updated late Friday morning with news of Rapport Therapeutics’ NASDAQ debut.)
At the mid-point pricing, Rapport Therapeutics has a market cap of $601.4 million.
Goldman Sachs, Jefferies & Co., TD Cowen and Stifel are the joint book-runners.
Rapport Therapeutics said it intends to start a Phase 2a proof-of-concept trial of RAP-219, its most advanced product candidate, in adult patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy in the second quarter or third quarter of 2024.
Rapport Therapeutics, based in Boston, takes its name from receptor associated proteins – aka “RAPs” – which play crucial roles in regulating receptor expression and function, the prospectus says. Neuronal receptors are complex assemblies of proteins, comprising receptor principal subunits and their receptor associated proteins – or RAPs.
“We believe RAP-219 also has therapeutic potential in peripheral neuropathic pain and bipolar disorder, and we intend to initiate Phase 2a trials in these indications in the second half of 2024 and in 2025, respectively,” Rapport Therapeutics says in the prospectus.
Rapport Therapeutics was formed in February 2022 with founding support from Third Rock Ventures and Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, the prospectus says.
The company’s scientific founder and chief scientific officer, David Bredt, M.D., Ph.D., pioneered the discovery of RAPs and their targeting by small molecules while serving as global head of neuroscience discovery at Janssen Pharmaceutica NV and before that, as vice president of neuroscience at Eli Lilly and Co. and as a professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, according to the prospectus.
In August 2022, Rapport Therapeutics entered into a drug R&D license agreement with Janssen Pharmaceutica, in which Rapport Therapeutics will be obligated to make certain milestone payments to Janssen in the future under certain circumstances, the prospectus says.
Rapport Therapeutics is not profitable, which is typical for a biotech when it goes public. For the 12 months that ended March 31, 2024, Rapport Therapeutics reported a net loss of $51.31 million on no revenue, according to financial statements in the prospectus.
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