For many people, managing a disease means chronic therapy. Scribe Therapeutics has a different vision: genetic medicines that offer durable effects for the masses. With its lead program on a path to report its first human data next year, Scribe has joined the public markets, raising $128.7 million.
“While current genetic medicines are largely limited to rare disorders, we are engineering our technologies for use in common diseases affecting millions,” Scribe said in its IPO filing. “By targeting prevalent diseases with significant unmet need and high clinical burden, we aim to usher in a new era of broadly scalable, transformative, and preventative genetic medicines.”
Strong investor interest enabled Scribe to add more than one million shares to its planned stock offering, boosting the deal size to 8.58 million shares. Late Thursday, Scribe priced those shares at $15 each, which was the top of the company’s projected price range. Scribe’s shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Friday under the stock symbol “SCTX.”
Alameda, California-based Scribe has selected cardiometabolic disorders as its first focus. Lead therapeutic candidate STX-1150 is intended to lower the “bad” form of cholesterol, which is a risk factor for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). This therapy is designed to lower LDL-cholesterol by repressing expression of PCSK9, a protein that in high amounts, reduces the ability of the liver to clear cholesterol from the blood. Injectable PCSK9 inhibitors are already available from Amgen, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and Novartis. Last week, Merck received FDA approval for Lipfendra, an oral PCSK9 inhibitor. While dosing frequency for these therapies varies, all of them are taken chronically.
The first genetic medicines made changes that were permanent. STX-1150 is based on Scribe’s proprietary Epigenetic Long-Term Repressor (ELXR) technology, which installs epigenetic marks at targeted places on a gene without changing DNA. These marks are not permanent and may be reversed if needed. By making these marks on the PCSK9 gene, STX-1150 is intended to repress the gene’s expression of the PCSK9 protein.
In tests in monkeys, Scribe reported that a single dose of an STX-1150 prototype led to therapeutically meaningful reduction in LDL cholesterol. This reduction was sustained for two years and the prototype was well tolerated. Scribe said this durability could address another problem with cardiovascular drugs: Adherence to currently available cardio drugs ranges from 40% to 50%. The company believes the long-acting effects of its drug could help more people stay on a drug regimen for longer.
“We believe that fixing the chronic care model in ASCVD will come not from adding another pill to the regimen or slightly modifying existing modalities, but rather from a genetic medicine solution that can deliver nature’s genetic blueprint for better cardiovascular health to all patients,” Scribe said in its IPO filing.
A Phase 1 study for STX-1150 is underway in Australia enrolling up to 64 adults with elevated LDL cholesterol and an increased risk of ASCVD. The company expects preliminary data will become available in the first half of 2027. The Scribe pipeline also includes two preclinical programs for ASCVD. Both are based on the company’s X-Editor (XE) platform, a CRISPR-based editing technology that develops drugs with the potential to be one-time treatments. STX-1200 edits and inactivates the LPA gene to prevent high levels of the cholesterol-carrying protein Lp(a), while STX-1400 edits APOC3, a protein that regulates the metabolism of triglycerides, a type of fat. Both programs are supported by up to $25.7 million in grant funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Scribe’s science is based on research from the University of California, Berkeley, labs of Jennifer Doudna, a Nobel Prize winner for her CRISPR discoveries, and David Savage. Both are co-founders of Scribe. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Benjamin Oakes, who worked in the Doudna and Savage labs.
Since Scribe’s formation, the company had raised $150 million prior to the IPO, according to the filing. The most recent financing was a $100 million Series B round in 2021. Scribe does have some revenue from pharma industry partnerships. The largest source of this collaboration revenue comes from Prevail, an Eli Lilly subsidiary developing in vivo CRISPR-based therapies for neuromuscular and neurological diseases. In addition to cash payments, Prevail made an equity investment in Scribe. Andreesen Horowitz is Scribe’s largest shareholder with a nearly 17% post-IPO stake, according to the filing. Eli Lilly owns a 6.5% stake in Scribe after the IPO.
As of the end of the first quarter of this year, Scribe reported its cash position was $49.7 million. That capital, combined with the IPO proceeds, will support the pipeline. Scribe plans to spend between $30 million and $35 million to continue Phase 1 development of lead program STX-1150. The two preclinical programs, STX-1400 and STX-1200, will each receive $15 million to $20 million to take them into human testing and the readout of preliminary Phase 1 data. Scribe estimates its capital will last into the first half of 2029.
Image: Yuichiro Chino, Getty Images
