Dive Brief:

• Evommune, a biotechnology company making a pair of drugs for immune conditions such as chronic skin hives and atopic dermatitis, priced a $150 million initial public offering on Wednesday.
• The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company sold nearly 9.4 million shares at $16 apiece, and will begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “EVMN.”
• Evommune is the second biotech, along with MapLight Therapeutics, to recently rely on a little-used section of the Securities Act to price an offering during the federal government shutdown. Under that provision, a company with an existing IPO registration statement can go public by filing an amended version that removes a key piece of legal language. The offering prices automatically 20 days afterwards. 

Dive Insight:

Founded five years ago, Evommune is developing would-be competitors to widely used inflammatory disease drugs like Xolair and Dupixent.

In its IPO prospectus, Evommune noted how Xolair and antihistamines aren't effective in many of the people who have chronic spontaneous urticarias, and that Dupixent hasn’t proven superior to other treatments in those who don't respond to Xolair. Rhapsido, a newly approved therapy from Novartis, is associated with certain side effects and drug interactions with other medications, too, the company said. 

Unlike the injectable Xolair and Dupixent, Evommune’s lead candidate EVO756 is an oral medicine. It’s also aimed at a different target, called MRGPRX2 — an approach the company believes may provide quicker relief from disease symptoms. EVO756 is in a pair of Phase 2 studies in chronic spontaneous urticaria and atopic dermatitis that should both produce results next year. 

A second drug, EVO301, is also in mid-stage testing for atopic dermatitis. That treatment binds to and neutralizes a target called IL-18, a cytokine implicated in inflammation. Evommune acquired EVO301 last year from South Korean biotech AprilBio for $15 million upfront, in a deal that could eventually pay out another $460 million. The company plans to test EVO301 in a trial in ulcerative colitis next year, and could pursue other indications, such as Crohn’s disease, afterwards. 

Prior to its IPO, Evommune had raised $267 million in private financing, backed by investors such as EQT Life Sciences, Pivotal bioVenture Partners and RA Capital Management.

Including Evommune, only a dozen biotech companies have gone public so far in 2025, about half of the nearly two dozen that had priced IPOs by this time last year, according to BioPharma Dive data. Since February, just two other drug startups, MapLight and LB Pharmaceuticals, have completed major stock offerings.