Cardiac drug developer Braveheart banks more than $382M in IPO

Dive Brief: - Braveheart Bio, a cardiac drugmaker, priced Wednesday an initial public offering that brought in $382.5 million in proceeds, adding to a busy year for biotechnology companies going public and raising large sums of cash. - It priced more than 21.2 million shares at $18 apiece, exceeding expectations it originally set in a filing last week. The company will begin trading on Nasdaq on Thursday under the ticker symbol “BRVE.” - Formed by a team of former HI-Bio executives, Braveheart is developing a drug it licensed from the Chinese pharmaceutical firm Hengrui Pharma as a competitor to Bristol Myers Squibb’s Camzyos for the progressive heart condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Braveheart said that drug, called BHB‑1893, could outperform approved treatments and be less burdensome for dosing regimens. Dive Insight: Braveheart took a quick route to the public markets. Founded in 2024, the company announced less than a year ago it had raised $185 million in a Series A round and had a drug prospect in clinical testing. Braveheart’s pact with Hengrui was one of roughly 60 struck between Chinese and U.S. or European biotech and pharma companies in 2025. BHB-1893 is what’s known as a cardiac myosin inhibitor. Those medicines are designed to make the heart’s contractions less forceful, which is helpful in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, where the heart muscle thickens and can make it harder to pump blood. Hengrui is already testing the medicine in Phase 3 studies of the “obstructive” form of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in China. Braveheart is set to follow with global trials in both that and the “non-obstructive” form of the condition in late 2026 and early 2027. "[T]his is really a story about finding the most compelling molecule," Braveheart’s CEO Travis Murdoch told BioPharma Dive last October, adding that BHB‑1893 "stood out in that search for its potential.” Braveheart is the third cardiac drug developer, and second with a program or portfolio licensed from a Chinese pharmacetical firm, to price an IPO so far this year. It’s the 17th drugmaker overall to go public in 2026 — a tally that surpasses last year's and is on pace meet the totals seen in 2023 and 2024. Attovia Therapeutics also priced this week, upping its planned IPO size to $289 million, following a trend of newly public biotech firms selling more shares than originally planned. It started trading Wednesday with the ticker symbol “ATTO.” Last week, Apnimed Pharmaceuticals brought in $192 million in its own upsized IPO. Later this week, pain drugmaker Latigo Therapeutics and cancer biotech BlossomHill Therapeutics are expected to also make their Wall Street debuts. The median IPO proceeds for newly public biotechs now hovers around $300 million, far higher than previous years. Most of those companies’ shares trade at higher values than when they debuted, too.