Lycia Therapeutics (LYCA) upsized its IPO at pricing to 17.64 million shares – up from 14.7 million shares in the prospectus – and priced its IPO at $18.00 – the top of its range – to raise $317.52 million on Thursday night, Oct. 22, 2026. Lycia’s stock is expected to start trading tomorrow – Friday, Oct. 23 – on the NASDAQ. The South San Francisco-based Phase 1 biotech’s IPO had been marketed at a price range of $16.00 to $18.00, according to the prospectus.
At pricing, Lycia Therapeutics had a market cap of $990.62 million.
Jefferies, TD Cowen, Evercore ISI and Guggenheim Securities were the joint book-runners. LifeSci Capital was a passive book-runner.
Lycia Therapeutics (LYCA) is developing drugs to treat autoimmune, inflammatory and allergic diseases – targeting food allergies as well as Graves’ disease. Its leading drug candidates are based on the work of Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi, a Nobel laureate on the Stanford faculty, according to the prospectus.
Lycia intends to use the IPO’s proceeds to provide funding for clinical trials, the prospectus said.
Lycia’s major shareholders include Versant Ventures, with an 18.9 percent pre-IPO stake that will drop to 13.5 percent after the IPO; Venrock Healthcare, with a 12.8 percent pre-IPO stake that will decline to 9.2 percent after the IPO, and Redmile Biopharma, with an 11.1 percent pre-IPO stake that will decline to 8.0 percent after the IPO. RTW Investments, Janus Henderson and Blue Owl are also principal stockholders.
“Based on foundational work from Nobel laureate Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi that extended the universe of protein degradation to include extracellular targets, LYTAC degraders are able to shuttle extracellular target proteins to the lysosome, where they are degraded, using the cell’s natural machinery. Building on Dr. Bertozzi’s work as the foundation, we have refined and expanded the LYTAC platform to serve as our drug discovery engine.”
Lycia Therapeutics described its drug candidates in the prospectus.
“By leveraging our proprietary LYTAC (Lysosomal Targeting Chimera) platform, we have developed a pipeline of therapeutic candidates with the potential to provide deep and durable elimination of extracellular proteins that are inadequately addressed by currently available therapies.”
Its immunoglobulin E (IgE) portfolio consists of:
*LCA-0061 – in a Phase 1 clinical trial in participants with elevated IgE, including patients with food allergy,
*LCA-0062, its fast-follower IgE program, in IND-enabling activities and if it receives regulatory clearance, the company will start a Phase 1 clinical trial. (IND stands for Investigational New Drug.)
The company’s Graves’ disease drug candidate, LCA-0321, is in a Phase 1 clinical trial in patients with Graves’ disease, the prospectus said. LCA-0321 is designed to selectively degrade thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR) autoantibodies, which are the pathogenic drivers of Graves’ disease, the prospectus said.
Financial Snapshot: Net loss of $30.03 million on collaboration revenue of $4.4 million for the 12 months that ended on June 30, 2026
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