IsoPlexis has completed an initial public offering that raised approximately $111 million in net proceeds toward further development of its single-cell proteomics platform and other R&D, as well as other general corporate purposes that include working capital, sales and marketing activities, funding operating expenses, and capital expenditures.
“At this time, we cannot specify with certainty the particular uses for the net proceeds from this offering,” IsoPlexis acknowledged in its IPO Prospectus. “The principal purposes of this offering are to create a public market for our common stock, obtain additional capital, facilitate future access to public equity markets, increase awareness of the company in the market, facilitate the use of our common stock as a means of attracting and retaining key employees, and provide liquidity to our current stockholders.”
isoPlexis sold 8,333,333 shares at $15 a share during its IPO on October 8, trading its shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “ISO.” Since then, shares of IsoPlexis have fallen to $10.87 on Monday but inched back up nearly 2.5% to $11.14 in trading today as of 3:21 p.m. ET.
The company has granted its IPO underwriters an option to purchase 1,249,950 additional shares from the company at the IPO price, minus underwriting discounts and commissions. Should that option be exercised in full, total net proceeds could reach approximately $128.4 million.
Headquartered in Branford, CT, IsoPlexis has developed a single-cell proteomics platform that it says is designed to reveal a more complete view of protein function at an individual cellular level, providing an end-to-end solution for users that includes IsoLight and IsoSpark instruments designed for use as fully-automated benchtop proteomic hubs, IsoCode and CodePlex chip consumables, and IsoSpeak software.
IsoPlexis’ IsoCode chips use the company’s core technology, leveraging its proteomic barcoding to capture single-cell protein information. CodePlex chips, introduced to the market last year, leverage IsoPlexis’ core technology to assay multiplexed bulk proteins from very low volumes. That data is interpreted through IsoSpeak software, which is designed to rapidly return comprehensive data figures in a format suitable for inclusion in a research publication submission and also capable of producing advanced visualizations to reveal key insights.
“We believe that our platform overcomes many of the limitations of traditional bulk proteomic workflows, which can be capital intensive, time consuming, and laborious, require multiple instruments and many manual steps, and may only be capable of analyzing small numbers of functional proteins at a time,” IsoPlexis asserted.
“We intend to further develop our product roadmap to integrate sequencing and functional proteomic biology from single cells to enable novel applications in discovery biology through our newest product, Duomic,” the company added.
Holding out for a “superhero”
Duomic, introduced last month at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT)–Precision Health conference, is a combined proteomic + transcriptomic platform designed to simultaneously measure functional protein and gene expression levels from the same cell. The platform is intended to fully characterize and link cellular function to patient outcomes, treatment response, or disease progression by identifying highly functional “superhero” cells orchestrating response.
IsoPlexis said its current product offering supported applications broadly used for translational, preclinical, and clinical development of advanced medicines, which according to the company represented a $12 billion addressable market opportunity. Another $12 billion addressable market opportunity comes from improving discovery biology through its IsoCode chop products.
“Our long-term strategy is ultimately to add additional applications serving clinical diagnostics research that will allow us to serve additional markets we believe to be worth approximately $10 billion,” IsoPlexis disclosed. “We expect that our initial entry into the clinical diagnostics market will start with our CodePlex solution for low volume bulk proteomics as it provides accessibility to end users through automation. We believe investments in these areas will provide access to a potential $34 billion addressable market.”
In its Prospectus, IsoPlexis identified by name several larger life sciences tech companies whose offerings compete to varying degrees with the company—including BD (Becton, Dickinson and Co.), Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Bio-Rad Laboratories.
“In addition, there are many large established players in the life sciences technology market that we do not currently compete with but that could develop systems, tools, or other products that will compete with us in the future,” IsoPlexis cautioned. “These large established companies have substantially greater financial and other resources than us, including larger research and development staff or more established marketing and sales forces.”
The IPO came nine months after IsoPlexis completed a $135 million Series D financing consisting of $85 million in equity securities and a $50 million credit facility. The round was led by Perceptive Advisors with participation from other new investors, Ally Bridge Group, and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, as well as other existing investors.
Pursuing “deeper insights”
Since commercial launch in June 2018, IsoPlexis said, its platform has been adopted by the top 15 global biopharmaceutical companies by revenue, and nearly half of the comprehensive cancer centers in the United States. Their purposes, according to the company, have included helping develop more durable therapeutics, overcoming therapeutic resistance, and predicting patient responses for advanced immunotherapies, cell therapies, gene therapies, vaccines, and regenerative medicines.
IsoPlexis reasons that its single-cell proteomics approach provides deeper insights into variations among each individual cell’s behavior—including underlying disease activity and therapeutic response—that are not afforded through traditional bulk methods of proteomics analysis, which analyze proteins in bulk samples made up of many different types of cells.
“Our initial focus has been on developing applications of our platform for cancer immunology and cell and gene therapy,” IsoPlexs stated. “We are now expanding our capabilities to include applications for infectious diseases, inflammatory conditions, and neurological diseases.”
IsoPlexis had placed 150 of its systems globally as of June 30. The company markets and sells its research-use-only platform through a direct sales channel in North America and specific regions in Europe, as well as through 12 distributor relationships in the rest of Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. The company said it intends to continue expanding its distribution network.
In addition to its headquarters, IsoPlexis occupies additional offices and manufacturing space in Branford, as well as additional offices in Campbell, CA, Kent, U.K., and Shanghai.
IsoPlexis’ workforce stood at 386 employees as of June 30, including a commercial team of approximately 170 and another 90 people engaged in R&D. Most of the company’s workforce (354) is based in the United States, with the other 32 employees based
across Europe and Asia.
The company finished the first six months of this year with a $36.1 million net loss on revenue of $7.5 million, compared with a $23.3 million net loss in 2020 on revenue of $10.4 million.
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