Obesity drugmaker Kailera Therapeutics plans to test investor appetites for another biotechnology initial public offering, according to a Friday securities filing.
If successful, the company, which has several experimental weight loss medicines in testing, could join a short list of newly public biotechs that have raised more than $1.7 billion in proceeds so far this year.
Kailera’s most advanced prospect, ribupatide, is a weekly GLP-1/GIP agonist in late-stage testing. So far, Kailera and its partner Hengrui Pharma have published data from a 48-week Phase 3 trial in China showing that ribupatide helped people with obesity, on average, lose 18% of their body weight.
The drugmaker expects to publish data from an earlier study of an increased dose next year, and findings from its global Phase 3 study in 2028.
Earlier in development are two obesity medicines in pill form, as well as a so-called “tri-agonist” shot that will enter human studies later this year. One of those drugs, an oral version of ribupatide, demonstrated an average of 12% weight loss over 26 weeks in a mid-stage study that Kailera and Hengrui read out in February.
Kailera began in 2024 as a project of Bain Capital, RTW Investments, Atlas Venture and Lyra Capital. The venture firms poured $400 million into the then-named “Hercules CM NewCo,” which was formed around several drug prospects licensed from Hengrui.
Kailera’s backers loaded the company with an additional $600 million last year to push its portfolio into further testing. By the end of 2025, Kailera had more than $652 million in cash and cash equivalents, according to the Friday SEC filing. Bain Capital holds the lion’s share of equity in Kailera, controlling roughly 46% of the company across venture capital and private equity funds. Kailera plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker “KLRA.”
Run by biotech veteran Ron Renaud, the biotech is hoping its combination therapies can carve out a share in a market dominated by Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.
“Some might say the market is locked up with two players today, and it’s going to be really hard to enter,” Renaud said in a January interview with BioPharma Dive. “There’s been no therapeutic area where that’s ever been the case.”
Kailera’s also exploring commercializing its own obesity drugs. The company’s lead prospect could hit the market as soon as 2029, Renaud said.
The last obesity drugmaker to go public, Metsera, raised $275 million in its IPO. Metsera was acquired late last year by Pfizer for $10 billion.
