After Successful IPO, Verastem, Inc. Tries to Deliver on Promise

Two-year-old Verastem Inc., which raised $55 million in an initial public offering in late January, was one of the first biotechnology start-ups in years to take its shares public before its drugs had entered clinical trials, a coup in an era of skeptical investors. Four months later, as executives on Tuesday remotely rang the opening bell on the Nasdaq exchange from their research lab in Cambridge, the company’s shares were buffeted by the volatile stock market as Verastem adjusted to life as a newly public company.