Clinical-stage antibody-drug conjugate startup Duality Biologics has filed for an initial public offering in Hong Kong, where there have been only a handful of biotech listing debuts in recent quarters.
The Shanghai-based biotech has built multiple ADC platforms and created 12 in-house ADC candidates, half of which are clinical-stage, since its founding in 2019. Its lead program is a HER2 ADC partnered with BioNTech known as DB-1303, or BNT323, and it could be filed for accelerated approval in the US as “early as 2025,” according to DualityBio’s IPO document. Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca’s Enhertu reinvigorated the HER2 ADC field.
DualityBio is partnered with BioNTech, BeiGene and Adcendo. All told, its partnerships have more than $4 billion in “total deal value,” according to DualityBio’s filing. It licensed one of its “core products,” B7-H3-targeted DB-1311, from WuXi Biologics’ subsidiary in Ireland.
The biotech is working on seven total trials across 17 countries, with more than 1,000 patients enrolled in its studies to date, according to its IPO paperwork filed Monday. Its platforms include various iterations on ADCs, such as a bispecific antibody conjugate. Beyond a broad pipeline in oncology, DualityBio also expects to bring the red-hot modality into the autoimmune field by 2026, which some industry insiders say could be the next frontier for the decades-old “fancy chemotherapy.”
DualityBio had 84 R&D employees at the end of March, working in China and the US. It spent about $43 million on R&D in the first three months of 2024, according to the IPO papers.
The startup had about $186 million in cash and equivalents at the end of March. Lilly Asia Ventures is its largest shareholder at about 16.5%. King Star Med, Founder Holdco and Shanghai Yingjia Enterprise Management Partnership each hold more than 9%. Founder Holdco is wholly owned by DualityBio founder John Zhu, a former partner at 6 Dimensions Capital and WuXi Ventures.
Other biotechs are looking to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, including Hangzhou Jiuyuan Genetic Engineering, which is making GLP-1 biosimilars and other medicines, and Insilico Medicine, one of the early AI drug discovery and development leaders.