Odyssey filed for an IPO in January but never revealed a fundraising target.
Odyssey Therapeutics has withdrawn its application to go public amid a biotech IPO market that has ground to a halt.
The immune-focused biotech did not provide specific reasons for walking back its IPO plans, revealing only in an SEC filing on Tuesday that going public “is not in the best interests of the company.”
Odyssey first filed for an IPO in January alongside fellow Massachusetts biotech Sionna Therapeutics. The latter company pushed through with its offering, landing on the Nasdaq floor with $219.2 million in February. In contrast, Odyssey at the time did not set a fundraising target.
After an initial burst of activity to start the year, IPOs have slowed down substantially. Maze Therapeutics opened the 2025 IPO class in early January, eventually raising $140 million to support the development of its oral drugs for chronic kidney disease. Since debuting on Nasdaq, however, Maze’s shares have fallen 20%.
A similar fate has awaited many of the biotechs that followed in Maze’s footsteps. Sionna, for instance, has dipped 34% since its IPO, while Aardvark Therapeutics, which filed for an IPO in February, has sunk by 12%.
One company that has notably bucked the trend, however, is Metsera, which has been a rising star in the obesity space. The biotech launched its Nasdaq bid in January with a goal to raise $289 million, ultimately collecting over $316 million in early February. A series of positive readouts has helped bolster the company’s shares.
Odyssey, meanwhile, had hoped to leverage the public markets to develop medicines to address “aberrant inflammation at its source.” The company’s lead asset is a small molecule RIPK2 scaffolding inhibitor that could disrupt the downstream activation of proinflammatory players. The candidate, dubbed OD-07656, is currently in Phase I development for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Odyssey presented data at the American College of Gastroenterology Annual Scientific Meeting in October 2024 in support of this mechanism of action, demonstrating that blocking RIPK2 scaffolding indeed suppresses the production of inflammatory cytokines.
Aside from OD-07656, Odyssey is also working on another small molecule drug for atopic dermatitis, hidradenitis suppurativa and osteoarthritis, as well as a protein therapeutic for systemic lupus erythematosus, vitiligo and type 1 diabetes. Both assets are currently in preclinical studies.
