b'that is willing to invest, you work togetherMORE DETAIL ON with that lead to help build the syndicate.Down the road, OnKures growth could leadRECENT DEALSto an acquisition and thats always a poten-tial exit, Piscopio says. An acquisition would be dictated by and large by the success ofIPO sOKI-179 because the other programs are very early. If we have good success in Phase 2, you can never rule it out. Biodesix Edgewise Goes Public RAISED:$64 MillionKoch moved on from Array to found EdgewiseCLOSED:October 2020Therapeutics (Boulder) in 2017 and led a suc-cessful initial public offering on March 30, 2021. ACCESSING THEEdgewise TherapeuticsThe company specializes in treatments forPUBLIC MARKETSRAISED:$202 Millionpatients suffering from a wide range of degen-erative muscle disorders, including multiplePROVIDES MORECLOSED:March 2021sclerosis. Its goal was to develop multiple therapies, but that would cost hundredsCAPITAL. YOU CAN DO of millions of dollars. An IPO was the onlyTHINGS IN PARALLEL. route, allowing it to draw in funding not only from healthcare-oriented investors but alsoAND THIS IS A investment generalists, Koch says. COMPETITIVE SPACE.Edgewise management began planning to go public in late 2020. This was Kochs secondKEVIN KOCH, PH.D.MERGERS & FOUNDER & CEO IPO after taking Array public in 2000. TheEDGEWISE THERAPEUTICS, INC. ACQUISITIONSglobal pandemic created opportunities for a virtual roadshow.Speed was of the essence to capitalize on The last time I took a company public, westrong investor interest in the biotech sector.DEAL: ArcherDX went on the road for three weeks all overFortunately, the market remained favorable,Acquired by Invitaethe world, and personally met 60 investors,and Edgewise closed the IPO, generatingVALUE:$1.4 Billion which was crazy, he notes. But this was$202 million in gross proceeds. With that really quite efficient. CLOSED:October 2020funding, Edgewise and its 22 employees can That said, it wasnt entirely without chal- now move ahead with a more ambitious drug lenges, including a change of plan whendevelopment plan. DEAL: Array BioPharmaa competitor produced mixed results inWe will ultimately evaluate our first drug,Acquired by Pfizertreating muscular dystrophy. Edgewise 5506, in both Duchenne MuscularVALUE:$11.4 BillionWe were going to run as fast as we could go toDystrophy, Becker Muscular Dystrophy, andCLOSED:July 2019get the IPO done, and when we saw the dataultimately in other muscular dystrophies or we said to ourselves Hmm, how are the inves- other neuromuscular diseases, Koch says. By tors going to react to that data set, and how ithaving more capital by accessing the publicDEAL: MBio Diagnosticsrelates to how they think about our asset? Wemarkets, you can do things in parallel. AndMerged with Brava actually slowed down for a couple of weeks,this is a competitive space. There are manyDiagnostics Koch says. After studying the data, and talkingcompanies looking to find drugs in muscular(Now LightDeck to analysts, Edgewise concluded the resultsdystrophy because its such a high, unmetDiagnostics)were actually favorable, we got back on track,medical need, and such an important diseaseVALUE: Undisclosedand ran as fast as we could to the IPO. to treat.CLOSED:July 2020As of Q1 2021.2021-2022 BIOSCIENCECOLORADO29'