Kardigan may have only launched last year, but it seems the cardiovascular-focused biotech is already eyeing the public markets.
The Bay Area-based company is led by CEO Tassos Gianakakos, who previously headed up the cardiovascular disease biotech MyoKardia for seven years. Fellow MyoKardia veterans Jay Edelberg, M.D., Ph.D., and Bob McDowell, Ph.D., are also co-founders and serve as chief medical officer and chief scientific advisor, respectively.
MyoKardia’s biggest achievement was mavacamten, a myosin inhibitor that persuaded Bristol Myers Squibb to buy the biotech for $13.1 billion in 2020. BMS secured approval for the drug as Camzyos two years later, and the therapy brought in $1.07 billion in sales for the Big Pharma last year.
Kardigan’s lead asset, danicamtiv, also has its origins at MyoKardia. In fact, Kardigan’s top spending priorities for a potential IPO, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday evening, is to continue the development of the cardiac myosin activator.
Danicamtiv is currently undergoing a phase 2b/3 study in genetic dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition where faulty genes can disrupt proteins in heart muscle, hindering the ability to pump blood round the body.
Next in line for some IPO cash is ataciguat, a soluble guanylate cyclase activator licensed from Sanofi and the Mayo Clinic that is currently in a phase 2b trial aimed at slowing the progression of calcific aortic valve stenosis (CAVS). The idea is that ataciguat can target valvular interstitial cells to slow the buildup of calcium on the aortic valve leaflets, which otherwise causes them to stiffen and narrow in CAVS patients.
The final asset on Kardigan’s list of key spending priorities is tonlamarsen, a liver-directed antisense oligonucleotide licensed from Ionis Pharmaceuticals that is being tested in a phase 2 trial. The hope is that by targeting hepatic angiotensinogen, tonlamarsen can help regulate blood pressure for patients who had recently been hospitalized for hypertension.
A previous phase 2 readout recently showed that tonlamarsen reduced a key biomarker for hypertension, while missing the study’s other goal of significantly reducing blood pressure.
This pipeline has already garnered interest from investors—Kardigan launched with a $300 million series A back in January 2025 and followed that up with a further $254 million 10 months ago. The biotech entered March with $287.1 million still in the bank, according to yesterday’s filing, but the company will need plenty more cash to fuel its ambition to take these drugs to market itself.
Kardigan has yet to reveal how many shares it is planning to offer in the IPO—or at what price—but CEO Gianakakos explained to Fierce Biotech earlier this year that he has big plans for the biotech.
The dream is to emulate in cardiovascular disease what Gilead Sciences and Vertex Pharmaceuticals have achieved in HIV and cystic fibrosis, respectively, he explained back in January.
“[Vertex] focused on the disease and not on a drug. And when you’re wired to say, ‘We’re going to cure cystic fibrosis,’ you keep going. Today, they are covering almost all of the forms of cystic fibrosis,” Gianakakos told Fierce at the time. “You can say the same about Gilead and HIV.”
Kardigan is following in the wake of a renewed stream of biotechs trying their luck on the Nasdaq this year, including the likes of Seaport Therapeutics, Hemab Therapeutics, Odyssey Therapeutics and Generate:Biomedicines. Last month, obesity biotech Kailera Therapeutics made history with an upsized $625 million offering that served as a welcome sign that the IPO window remains open.
