Odyssey Therapeutics has bailed on its long-awaited public listing, providing further evidence that the IPO window remains firmly shut for now.
The autoimmune- and inflammatory-disease-focused biotech first announced an ambition in January to go public as part of a mini-wave of like-minded drug developers. But the company informed the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday that it is withdrawing its registration statement because the drug developer “has determined that it is not in the best interests of the company to conduct the proposed offering at this time.”
Odyssey’s decision shouldn’t come as a surprise; capital markets experts have already predicted to Fierce that the market turbulence unleashed by President Donald Trump’s tariff policies would likely evaporate the trickle of biotech IPOs that were expected in 2025.
Odyssey had been eyeing an IPO as way to access fresh funding for a pipeline led by an RIPK2 inhibitor that was being readied for phase 2 trials for ulcerative colitis as a monotherapy and in combination with Takeda’s Entyvio.
The biotech has previously struck deals to add to its assets and capabilities, buying Rahko for its machine learning prowess and acquiring IFM Discovery for MDA5 and NLRP1 discovery programs. IFM was a subsidiary of IFM Therapeutics, a biotech founded by Odyssey CEO Gary Glick, Ph.D. Glick previously set up and ran Scorpion Therapeutics, which Eli Lilly recently bought for up to $2.5 billion.
Odyssey has also bagged Big Pharma partnerships, included receiving $6.5 million from Johnson & Johnson to jointly discover and optimize small molecules using Odyssey’s artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. Meanwhile, Pfizer paid $1 million as part of a collaboration intended to identify novel hits using Odyssey’s natural product platform.
The biotech announced its IPO ambitions in January around the same time as Sionna Therapeutics—which did follow through with its plans to go public. Sionna raised $219.2 million via its listing in February, and the cystic fibrosis-focused biotech’s shares closed trading Monday at $16.46, slightly below their $18 debut price.
Other biotechs that squeezed in through the short-lived IPO window at the start of the year include Maze Therapeutics and Metsera Therapeutics. Metsera’s stock has soared 66% from a January debut of $18 to a Monday closing price of $30 thanks in part to some impressive weight loss data yesterday.
Kidney-disease-focused Maze has been less successful, with its shares trading down 20% at $12.81 yesterday compared to a debut price of $16.