Attovia's CEO aims to scratch itch opportunity and challenge Dupixent with $289M IPO

Biotech Attovia's CEO aims to scratch itch opportunity and challenge Dupixent with $289M IPO By Darren Incorvaia Aug 5, 2026 7:00am Attovia Therapeutics IPO itching inflammation Attovia Therapeutics has accreted a hefty $289 million from its IPO to power its anti-itch drugs through clinical development, marking another upsized listing in what has become a banner year for biotech Nasdaq debuts. After initially hoping to bring in around $182.4 million by selling 12.5 million shares priced between $15 and $17 apiece, Attovia later updated its plans to aim for $265.1 million in net proceeds. Wednesday, the biotech revealed it ultimately sold 17 million shares priced at $17.

The resulting $289 million in gross proceeds could be boosted by a further $43.3 million should underwriters fully take up their option to buy an additional 2.5 million shares at the same price. The company's stock will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ATTO.” The Silicon Valley-based company has been on a biotech speedrun, securing three fundraises and now an IPO to go along with phase 1 data for its lead asset after just three years of existence. Attovia plans to use the IPO haul to kick off two large phase 2 studies next year for ATTO-1310, an engineered biologic that blocks the itch-inducing interleukin-31 (IL-31).

These trials will focus on chronic pruritus of unknown origin and a subset of atopic dermatitis patients who experience high levels of itchiness, Attovia CEO Tao Fu told Fierce in an interview. But the ultimate potential for a chronic itch drug is substantial, he said. “Chronic itch is a huge disease burden impacting ...

over 15 million people in the U.S.,” Fu said. The severity of chronic itch—which can lead to skin damage, sleep loss, depression and even suicidal thoughts—is often underappreciated because itch is viewed as a symptom rather than a disease worth treating in its own right, the CEO pointed out. “This has an immense impact on their quality of life, and right now there's really no effective therapy,” Fu said.

“We actually have a forecast of over $11 billion peak sales for ATTO-1310 in just the core indications.” Attovia’s platform, licensed from Alamar Biosciences, allows for the modular construction of molecules that can hit numerous targets, according to Fu. The company calls these molecules “attobodies.” The CEO described these attobodies as “like Lego pieces” with binding arms built to hit multiple pieces of the same target. While ATTO-1310 hits just one target, Attovia’s pipeline also boasts a bispecific for IL-31 and IL-13, as well as a trispecific for TL1A, IL-23 and integrin α4β7.

While these assets, respectively called ATTO-2306 and ATTO-1091, are still in preclinical development, Fu intends to push them into phase 1 testing early next year. ATTO-1310 faces one approved challenger in the form of Galderma’s Nemluvio, which is approved for atopic dermatitis and is in development for chronic pruritus. But otherwise the market is vastly underserved, and Attovia has argued its approach to targeting IL-31 is superior to first-in-class Nemluvio’s.

While Galderma’s drug binds to IL-31’s receptor, ATTO-1310 is designed to cling to IL-31 itself. “We actually believe by targeting the ligand, we can achieve stronger or deeper and faster itch relief,” Fu said, noting that ATTO-1310 may also allow for less frequent dosing. The bispecific ATTO-2306, on the other hand, is meant to directly face off against Sanofi and Regeneron’s blockbuster inflammation med Dupixent.

“Dupi is going to be biosimilar in 2031,” Fu said. “You have to set the bar very high for a biologic to challenge Dupi in that context. You basically have to outperform on both efficacy and dosing—that's how we are designing the molecule.” The trispecific ATTO-1091 is in development for inflammatory bowel disease, another heavily crowded indication.

In general, Fu said he could see Attovia ultimately commercializing its assets through partnerships with Big Pharma or on its own depending on the specific indication. Attovia’s quick pace through the biotech lifecycle has been enabled by its platform, Fu told Fierce, which uses a “secret sauce” of an “evolution-driven approach” to rapidly screen prospective attobodies for desired characteristics. “You actually don't need to do a lot of optimization,” Fu said.

“These attobodies come out of the ‘assembly line’ [and] pretty much have the properties we're looking for.” While the California biotech’s near-term goal is to succeed in ATTO-1310’s dual phase 2 studies and then march on to phase 3, the long-term vision is to roll more and more medicines off the attobody assembly line. While inflammation and immunology is the focus right now, Fu sees no reason for Attovia to limit itself—aside from human capital constraints. “We really have no restrictions,” the CEO said.

“We have a lot of ideas, but I’ll also say we have only 45 people right now. We need to be focused.” Attovia Therapeutics IPO itching inflammation biotech IPO Biotech