The following excerpt is from a story that originally ran in The Boston Globe on September 12, 2023.
The company’s IPO will be closely watched in the biopharma industry and beyond as an indication of whether investor appetite is starting to pick up for risky startups with big potential payoffs.
An industry snapshot released last week by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, a trade group, showed a mixed picture. The state’s biopharma workforce expanded last year even as venture capital investment slowed and fewer companies went public. Only eight state biotechs executed IPOs in 2022, down from 25 in 2021.
No biotechs in the state went public in the first half of this year, but that may be changing. Ben Bradford, head of external affairs for MassBio, cited improved economic conditions, including the leveling off of interest rates after a year of rapid increases, and a sense that science is advancing broadly in drug discovery.
“My hope is to see things loosening up a bit for IPOs,” said Bradford. “If Neumora is successful, it would not surprise me to see other [biopharma] companies follow in their footsteps.”