Verve Therapeutics, a cholesterol-targeting, gene-editing startup and the first biotech to be incubated by the venture capital arm of Google, hit public markets on Thursday after a $267 million IPO — more than twice what it was originally hoping to raise.
The Cambridge company is trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol "VERV." Its shares were trading at around $30 as of 1:15 p.m., an increase of 60% over the initial $19 offering. That offering was itself above the $16 to $18 price range Verve had previously set.
Verve sold 14 million shares in the IPO. It had initially filed to raise $100 million, with JP Morgan, Jefferies, Guggenheim Securities and William Blair backing the listing.
The company was founded by two Harvard scientists: J. Keith Joung, one of the co-founders behind Editas Medicine (Nasdaq: EDIT), and Sekar Kathiresan.
Verve's singular focus is to eliminate cardiovascular disease linked to high cholesterol. The startup aims to use CRISPR to turn off eight genes linked to high cholesterol, reducing patients' risk of coronary heart disease. It emerged from stealth in 2019 after being incubated by by GV, formerly Google Ventures.
Pre-IPO, Verve raised $216 million across three funding rounds. Its lead investors include GV, Wellington Management Company and Casdin Capital. The startup also has collaboration deals with fellow gene-editing startup Beam Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: BEAM) and Alphabet Inc.'s life sciences company, Verily.
Verve is the seventh Massachusetts-based biotech to hit public markets this year. Oncology startup Werewolf Therapeutics (Nasdaq: HOWL) went public in a $120 million IPO in April; prior to that, Marlborough-based Akoya Biosciences (Nasdaq: AKYA) raised $132 million in its IPO the same month. Werewolf is now trading at about 6% lower than its IPO price, while Akoya's share price is almost unchanged. Longwood Fund-founded TScan Therapeutics recently filed for a $100 million IPO but has yet to come online.
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