Rani Therapeutics, a San Jose-based company developing a pill to replace medical injections, went public on Friday.
According to S-1 filings, shares were estimated to price between $14 and $16 last week. On Friday, shares debuted slightly lower, around $11. Rani raised about $73 million in its debut. Rani’s debut comes amidst a flurry of IPO activity in therapeutics. In 2020, 71 biotech companies went public. Already in 2021, 59 companies have IPO’ed and even more are on the way. On July 30 alone, eight different biotech companies are expected to begin trading, including Rani Therapeutics. Rani Therapeutics, is, as Imran puts it “laser focused” on itself, rather than the IPO activity around it. The decision to go public was partially bolstered by the results of a phase I study– early evidence that the RaniPill, the company’s flagship product could be brought into the clinic. “We are already in humans, and clearly on a strong path to make oral biologics [a] reality. This is a hot and unique market for life science direction and we’re excited to be driving innovation in this area,” Imran tells TechCrunch. Rani Therapeutics flagship product is RaniPill, essentially, a capsule designed to deliver medicines that would usually be delivered via injections. TechCrunch covered the pill in more detail here, but it works according to a few basic steps. The pill is covered by a coating resistant to stomach acid. Once the pill enters the small intestine, the coating dissolves, allowing for a small balloon to inflate. Once that small balloon inflates, medication is delivered by a microneedle (which dissolves after the drug is administered). Then, the rest of the balloon is “excreted through normal digestive processes,” per the company’s S-1 filing. This whole process occurs in a pill that, on the outside, looks like a gel capsule. There is evidence for some conditions suggesting patients prefer oral drugs to injections: for example, studies on cancer patients have illuminated patient preference for oral therapies rather than regular injections. That’s not the case for every condition. Some patients show preference long-acting medicines delivered via injection rather than having to take lots of pills (this is the case in for some HIV patients). However, it’s fair to say that needles aren’t exactly pleasant. A 2019 review and meta analysis of 35 studies found that between 20 and 30 percent of young adults are afraid of needles, a fear which can lead some people to avoid medical treatments or vaccines. Rani Therapeutics has been developing capsules for drugs that have already been approved by the FDA, but are often administered via regular injections. They include:- Octreotide for acromegaly or neuroendocrine tumors in the GI tract (NETs)
- TNF-alpha inhibitors for psoriatic arthritis
- Parathyroid hormone (PTH) for osteoporosis
- Human growth hormone (HGH) for HGH deficiency
- Parathyroid hormone for hypothyroidism