The two offerings that set near identical terms on October 26 priced differently on October 29, and the difference is the information. Aspen Neuroscience sold roughly 9.4 million shares at $15 each, the low end of its $15 to $17 range, raising $140.6 million gross to fund clinical testing of sasineprocel, its one time autologous cell therapy designed to replace the dopamine producing neurons lost in Parkinson’s disease. The stock debuts on Nasdaq on October 30 under the ticker ASPE. Sasineprocel is in an open label Phase 1/2a study in moderately advanced Parkinson’s, with long term data expected in 2028 and a Phase 3 study intended to start before then, by the end of next year on the company’s current plan.
Bambusa Therapeutics, by contrast, sold more paper at the midpoint. Its upsized offering priced 10,555,555 shares at $16, up from the roughly 9.4 million shares marketed, for gross proceeds of $168,888,880 before underwriting discounts and expenses, with a further 1,583,333 shares available under the underwriters’ option. The stock trades on Nasdaq from October 30 under BBTX, with closing expected November 2. Bambusa, founded in 2024 by former BioNTech leaders, develops long acting bispecific antibodies for immunology and inflammation, led by BBT001 against IL-4R alpha and IL-31. At the pricing, Bloomberg Law reported a market value of about $815 million.
Endpoints News put the pair in the year’s context: the two deals take the 2026 biotech IPO total to about $8 billion across 29 offerings, the most listings in a single year since 2021 on BioPharma Dive’s count. BioPharma Dive also noted the composition shift: with Aspen, nine biotechs with medicines only in Phase 1 development have priced this year, more than the previous two years combined, while cell and gene therapy makers have drawn smaller cheques than the wider window, with Scribe Therapeutics’ roughly $129 million August offering the closest comparator to Aspen’s.
Read against the October 27 terms coverage, the outcome is a split verdict on risk. Investors funded both companies in full, which a closed window would not have done, but they paid the bottom of the range for the manufacturing heavy, single asset cell therapy and paid up in size, if not in price, for the platform bispecific story. First day trading on October 30 is the next data point, not a substitute for the Phase 3 programme Aspen now has to run.