City Therapeutics files for a Nasdaq IPO as CTY after burning $43 million in six months

City Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech developing RNA interference drugs, filed on Thursday for an initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker CTY, according to its registration statement with the SEC. The filing does not yet give a price range or share count. Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, Stifel and Oppenheimer are listed as underwriters.

RNAi drugs switch off the production of a specific protein. City's lead candidate, CITY-FXI, targets Factor XI, a clotting protein, and is aimed at blood-clot conditions such as secondary stroke prevention and atrial fibrillation in patients who cannot take standard anticoagulants. The company has other programs in the eye and central nervous system, and research partnerships with Bausch + Lomb and Biogen.

The numbers in the filing

City had $172.1 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash at June 30, including $2.5 million restricted, and an accumulated deficit of $142.5 million. The company lost $58.5 million in all of 2025.

The burn looks worse than it is, and then better than it is

The sixfold jump in operating cash burn overstates the change. In the first half of 2025, City collected upfront cash from its Biogen deal (a $16 million payment in June 2025), which shows up as a $12.6 million increase in deferred revenue and flattered that period's cash flow. Without partner cash landing, the business spends roughly what its losses suggest.

That cuts the other way too. At the first-half 2026 pace of about $43 million per six months, the $170 million or so of unrestricted cash would last roughly two years before any IPO money. The company says its expenses will "increase substantially" as programs move through trials, so that pace is a floor. The runway date in the filing is still blank.

What investors will be buying

The IPO comes only months after private investors put $99.5 million into City's Series B in May and June 2026, on top of $134.7 million in Series A money in 2024. It has no approved products and no product sales, so public investors would be paying for the next rounds of trials.

The clinical evidence is early. In the first three dose groups of a Phase 1 study in healthy volunteers, City said CITY-FXI was generally well tolerated and cut Factor XI levels by more than 60% after a single 15 mg dose, close to 80% at 50 mg and 85% three weeks after a 150 mg dose. It expects more Phase 1 data in late 2026. The field is crowded: the filing lists milvexian, asundexian, abelacimab, CTX-611 and two Regeneron candidates among Factor XI drugs already in clinical development, and notes that other Factor XI agents have produced Phase 2 and Phase 3 data.

The partnerships carry large headline numbers that depend on future success. Bausch + Lomb, for example, could pay up to $485 million in milestones plus royalties, but only if programs clear development, regulatory and sales hurdles.

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Sources: City Therapeutics Form S-1 (SEC). IPO terms were not set at filing. This is market information, not investment advice.