Maze Therapeutics, Inc.

Biopharma leaders will descend on San Francisco next week hopeful that the industry’s biggest dealmaking event will finally yield some much sought-after M&A. The industry needs it after a slow fourth quarter, which had the lowest number of deals and total quarterly value since the first quarter of 2022, according to a JP Morgan analysis published this week. There were only 18 M&A transactions in the final three-month stretch of 2024, compared to 31 in the same period in 2023. The total deal value was about one-tenth of 2023’s exuberant fourth quarter. “Somehow the bubbles in New Years’ champagne weren’t quite as robust as they might have been a year ago,” Stifel’s Tim Opler wrote Tuesday. The biggest deal of 2024 was Vertex’s $4.9 billion acquisition of Alpine Immune Sciences in April. In a securities filing, Alpine said it held talks during the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference with four unnamed companies about its R&D plans before entering a confidentiality agreement with Vertex in mid-February. The conference has long served as a place to announce major deals in addition to being one of the industry’s biggest breeding grounds for dealmaking. It’s viewed as a kind of bellwether for the M&A and trends that will shape the biopharma industry over the course of the year. And as the meeting’s profile has risen, many investors and startup executives now expect a drumbeat of deals to kick the first quarter into gear, particularly this year since large drugmakers spent last year inking deals that hovered around $1 billion in value. “Note that some see this as [a] source of near-term downside risk if we don’t have a busy start to the year/JPM given expectations relatively high for a quick start,” Raymond James’ bankers wrote Sunday in a note. There were no megadeals or even medium-sized M&A in 2024, even though big pharma companies had about $1 trillion in cash and debt capacity for deals, according to a Jefferies report in August. Those companies with firepower appeared to play it safe, betting on early-stage private biotechs that likely would’ve been on the Nasdaq if the public markets weren’t so uncertain. Johnson and Johnson, Merck and Novo Nordisk have the most firepower, Jefferies analysts noted. It was the first year in more than two decades without a $5 billion or larger biopharma deal, according to William Blair. It was also the first year without a $10 billion deal since 2012, they wrote. The firm’s bankers predict 2025 will have “meaningful public company M&A” and about 30 IPOs. The looming patent cliff is a massive concern for many large drugmakers, which still need to address near-term revenue holes that won’t be filled by the longer-term bets they made last year. Many of the deals last year focused on drugs that are still years away from pivotal trials or a shot at approval. That said, while some Wall Street bankers expect a better year for dealmaking, it may not be noticeably different than the past two years. “Our initial hope was that M&A would pick up after a decisive US election outcome, but with uncertainty around Trump’s healthcare appointees and macroeconomic headwinds, our sense is that big pharma is taking a wait‐and‐see approach,” Oppenheimer bankers wrote this week. “We expect 2025 M&A activity to land somewhere between 2023 & 2024 levels, given the overall pro‐business stance of the incoming administration, particularly around changes at the helm of the FTC.” The Oppenheimer team recorded 57 M&A transactions in 2024, down from 65 in 2023, and 172 business development and licensing deals in 2024, down from 194. Headed into next week’s JP Morgan conference, there has been a flurry of licensing deals, collaborations and megaround financings to kick off 2025 . And one company — Maze Therapeutics — finally unveiled its IPO intentions . A notable deal may also be in the works; The Financial Times this week reported that GSK is considering buying cancer drugmaker IDRx for about $1 billion, citing sources familiar with the discussions.

Maze Therapeutics hopes to use some of its IPO proceeds to boost its Compass platform, which uses human genetic variation to pinpoint genes associated with disease to identify potential new drug targets.\n Just a month after announcing a $115 million series D financing to advance its lead assets, Maze Therapeutics is looking to boost its kidney disease candidates further by going public.The Bay Area-based biotech revealed the planned IPO in a Jan. 7 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission but did not divulge how many shares it plans to offer or at what price.Maze applied to be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol \"MAZE,\" according to the filing. Proceeds from the offering, like the series D round before it, will go toward guiding MZE829 and MZE782 through clinical development. MZE829 is an oral APOL1 inhibitor being tested for APOL1 kidney disease, with a phase 2 trial planned to begin by the first quarter of 2025.MZE782, an oral SCL6A19 inhibitor, is earlier in its clinical journal, and is currently being tested in a phase 1 trial with healthy volunteers. Maze plans to pursue the drug in chronic kidney disease and phenylketonuria, according to the filing.The remainder of the funds will go towards “further development of additional common disease programs” in cardiovascular, renal and metabolism indications, the company said in the filing, “including preclinical studies, IND-enabling studies and initiation of clinical trials.” Maze also hopes to use the IPO to boost its Compass platform, which uses human genetic variation to pinpoint genes associated with disease to identify potential new drug targets. The company’s work on genetic variation earned it a place on Fierce Biotech’s 2019 Fierce 15 list.The biotech\'s fundraising efforts thus far have paid off to the tune of almost $500 million, including its $191 million 2019 debut and a $190 million round in 2022.

Maze Therapeutics has submitted its pitch for an initial public offering after disclosing a $115 million Series D, forging a neuroscience spinoff and running into a dealmaking hurdle with the FTC. The Bay Area startup revealed its plans Tuesday night to trade on the Nasdaq as $MAZE . It has yet to disclose how much it could seek in the proposed offering. The startup’s IPO pitch follows a relatively dismal multiyear stretch for biopharma public debuts. Making its IPO desires known in the lead-up to next week’s annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference will likely drive attention and be the center of conversations as industry insiders hope for more dealmaking and a more bustling public market. The 121-employee Maze had $149 million in cash and equivalents at the end of September, according to its prospectus. Third Rock Ventures, which launched Maze in 2019, is its biggest stockholder at 20%. ARCH owns nearly 12%, Matrix Capital holds about 7%, and Foresite and GV each have nearly 7% as well, according to the IPO paperwork. Its Nasdaq debut would arrive about eight months after Shionogi signed a deal for Maze’s Pompe disease asset, which is ready for Phase 2. The Japan-based partner is paying $150 million upfront and an undisclosed amount in biobucks for the small molecule. It was a quick turnaround for Maze, which was left blindsided by Sanofi’s decision to pull out of a licensing pact for the drug in late 2023 in reaction to scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, which had said it would move to block the deal. After the Sanofi deal ended, Maze received “a lot of inbound interest,” Maze CEO Jason Coloma told Endpoints News on the sidelines of JPM last January. Coloma said Maze would “have a better sort of guidance” on its next financing steps, including a potential IPO, once it inked a deal with a new Pompe partner. Beyond Pompe, the biotech is testing an oral small molecule, dubbed MZE829, as a potential treatment for APOL1 kidney disease. It entered Phase 2 in November, with data slated for the first quarter of 2026. Another small molecule, codenamed MZE782 for chronic kidney disease, entered Phase 1 in September and will have initial data in the second half of this year. Maze spent $61 million on research and development through the first nine months of 2024, only about $3.5 million more than the same period in 2023, according to its S-1 filing. The biotech recently shipped its UNC13A-directed antisense oligonucleotide to Trace Neuroscience, which emerged with $101 million in November to take on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The biotech has had mixed success with joint ventures in the past. Its ophthalmology-focused partner Broadwing Bio has been quiet in recent years, and its cardiovascular-centered JV with BridgeBio, named Contour Therapeutics, has since been unwound, Coloma previously told Endpoints . Maze’s founders include Verve Therapeutics CEO Sek Kathiresan, the Whitehead Institute’s Jonathan Weissman, Stanford’s Aaron Gitler, Harvard Medical School’s Stephen Elledge, and the Broad Institute’s Mark Daly.