Scribe Therapeutics has raised close to $129 million in the first initial public offering for a developer of gene editing medicines in more than two years.
The startup on Thursday sold 8.58 million shares at $15 apiece, topping projections set earlier this week. Shares will begin trading Friday on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol “SCTX.”
Biotech IPOs have been on an upswing in 2026. Including Scribe’s offering, 14 companies have priced new stock issuances this year, already surpassing last year’s anemic total and putting the sector on track to surpass the annual numbers logged between 2022 and 2024, according to BioPharma Dive data. Aside from Scribe, six more biotechs have revealed plans in July to go public, suggesting activity could pick up considerably in the weeks ahead.
Notably, most of the sector’s recent IPOs have been unusually large. Prior to Scribe’s, companies had been pulling in a median of over $300 million per offering in 2026, far higher than what’s been observed in recent years, data show.
These big-ticket issuances, though, were largely completed by more mature companies. A recent report from HSBC’s Innovation Banking division noted how this year’s class went a median of about five years between raising their first venture funding and going public. All but one had drugs in mid- or late-stage testing, more than any other recent year. Those factors help “explain the much larger median raise,” which included record-setting IPOs from Kailera Therapeutics and Parabilis Medicines, the HSBC report said.
Scribe’s IPO is much smaller by comparison, but the company is also much earlier in its development journey, having only recently brought its first medicine into human testing. It’s also bucking a trend, as its offering is the first for a gene editing company since Metagenomi’s $94 million IPO in February 2024. These kinds of companies have largely struggled of late to not only reach the public markets but grow their value afterwards, as medicines based on gene editing technology are largely limited to rare conditions and have yet to become big sellers.
Scribe indicated in its IPO filing that it plans to change that trend. Using a kind of “epigenetic” approach that can silence gene expression without altering DNA, it’s targeting more common cardiometabolic diseases affecting millions of people. The hope is this strategy will create “broadly scalable,” preventive genetic medicines, Scribe wrote in its filing. Three are in early development.
The one in human trials, STX-1150, stops production of the PCSK9 protein, an approach known to drop levels of LDL-C or “bad” cholesterol. Scribe views STX-1150 as a longer-lasting alternative to injections and pills, as well as a way to boost flagging adherence rates to cholesterol-lowering drugs. Unlike some other therapies in development, it doesn’t irreversibly edit DNA either. Data from a first-in-human trial are expected in the first half of 2027.
Two preclinical treatments are aimed at a pair of other well-known cardiometabolic targets, the genes LPA and APOC3. Both are the focus of nucleic acid-based therapies either in advanced testing or on the market. Scribe is positioning its medicines as long-lasting, gene editing alternatives and hopes to begin human trials in 2027 or 2028.
