What happened
Shares of Neumora Therapeutics (NMRA 0.99%) were down more than 32% for the week as of Thursday's market close, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The clinical-stage biotech just went public last Friday via an initial public offering (IPO). It closed last week at $16.25 a share and dropped to as low as $9.90 a share on Wednesday.
So what
The company focuses on developing neuroscience therapies. The company priced its IPO shares at $17 a share, but it opened last Friday at $16.50 and only rose to as high as $17.74. It's a little early to throw the towel in on the stock as it has a promising pipeline with seven programs to treat neuropsychiatric disorders, led by Navacaprant, a oral kappa opioid receptor antagonist that is in phase 3 trials as a potential monotherapy to treat major depressive disorder (MDD).
Now what
The company's shares bounced back a bit this week, but most of that rise was due to insider buying. Amgen, which has a capital and research partnership with Neumora, bought 35,368,653 shares of stock on Tuesday. Also on Tuesday, company director Kristina Burow, the managing director of ARCH Venture Partners, bought 3,624,143 shares of Neumora stock. At his point, with no approved therapies and just a week of trading, it's hard to tell exactly what the company's shares are worth. A lot of healthcare companies, following their IPOs, watch their shares fall until they actually have concrete news to report regarding a therapy.
The company has said that it expects a readout from Navacaprant's phase 3 pivotal trial in the second half of next year. The company also said it expects to begin a phase 1 study for Alzheimer's disease agitation therapy NMRA-511 to start in the first half of next year and an Investigational New Drug (IND) submission for schizophrenia therapy NMRA-266 to start in the fourth quarter.