Allogene astounds Wall Street with $324m IPO to fund cell therapy R&D

Great things were expected of Allogene Therapeutics’ IPO this week – the company is led by Arie Belldegrun and David Chang, who masterminded development and approval of Kite Pharma’s CAR-T cancer therapy before selling the company to Gilead for $12 billion. The company had already raised more than $400 million in two private funding rounds to develop its ‘off-the-shelf��� CAR-T therapy and had been planning to raise $287 million from its debut on Wall Street. But the IPO this week exceeded even this ambitious target, raising $324 million on Wednesday, with shares rising by 30% on the first day of trading. So far, Kite is part of an elite club of only two companies that have managed to get CAR-T therapies to market – its Yescarta won approval shortly after Novartis’ Kymriah last year.