Biotech company becomes the Triangle’s newest public company. It plans to double jobs.

Shattuck Labs, a biotechnology company that splits its offices between Research Triangle Park and Austin, Texas, has become the Triangle region’s latest public company, after raising more than $200 million in an initial public offering Friday on the Nasdaq stock market.

The move comes just a few months after the company, which develops novel cancer treatments, raised $118 million from investors, including Durham-based Hatteras Venture Partners, The News & Observer reported.

Founded in 2016, the biotech company has created a platform called Agonist Redirected Checkpoint, on which it is developing novel cancer and autoimmune disease treatments.

The money raised from the IPO will be used to fund Phase 1 trials of two of its potential treatments. The company’s leading treatment candidate would be for patients with ovarian cancer.

The company’s stock opened on the Nasdaq at $22.10 per share. By noon, the price had fallen to $18 per share. The company trades under the ticker symbol STTK. The IPO price valued the company at more than $600 million.

While Shattuck has offices split between Texas and the Parmer RTP campus in Research Triangle Park, all of the company’s science and laboratories are based in Durham. Taylor Schreiber, the company’s CEO, also is based in Durham.

In an interview earlier this year, Schreiber said the company plans to double its research space in RTP and its number of employees in the area.

“RTP is a phenomenal place for companies like us to grow,” Schreiber told the N&O this summer, “partly because of all of the real estate that’s available here. You pay about 10% or 20% per square foot here what we would pay for inferior space in Boston or San Francisco.”

The company has 50 employees, according to its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Schreiber said two-thirds of the employees are based in Durham.

The company is based in lab space in what was once GSK’s expansive presence here. GSK has downsized in recent years, including shedding many employees, some of whom now work at Shattuck and other local biotech startups.

As a young research-focused company, Shattuck has lost money so far, according to its financial reports. The company lost $7.4 million in 2018 and $24 million in 2019.

Its largest shareholders are its executive chairman Josiah Hornblower (who owns 9% of shares), Schreiber (7.1%), Fidelity (5.7%) and Redmile Group (5.7%).

The filing shows that in June, Durham-based Hatteras bought a $5 million stake in the company.

This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate

Original Article Source: News & Observer