Crescent Biopharma Closes $143.7M Offering, Pro Forma Cash Hits $305.1M as CR-001 ASCEND Trial Advances Toward 2027 Data Readout

Crescent Biopharma (CBIO) closed a public offering on July 16, 2026, raising $143.7 million in gross proceeds before underwriting discounts, commissions, and other offering expenses, according to the July 16, 2026 closing announcement on StockTitan.

The offering comprised 9,387,896 ordinary shares — including 1,293,103 shares issued on full exercise of the underwriters' option — plus pre-funded warrants to purchase up to 525,897 ordinary shares. Ordinary shares priced at $14.50; pre-funded warrants at $14.499, reflecting the share price less the $0.001 exercise price per warrant.

Jefferies, TD Cowen, Guggenheim Securities, and Cantor served as joint book-running managers. LifeSci Capital acted as passive book-running manager.

Cash and cash equivalents stood at $171.6 million as of June 30, 2026. The $133.5 million in net proceeds from the offering brings pro forma cash to $305.1 million as of that same date, per Crescent's Q2 2026 earnings release published July 30, 2026. The company states that this cash position funds operations into the second half of 2028.

The company's stated milestone before that runway expires is proof-of-concept data from the ASCEND trial, anticipated in Q1 2027, per the July 30, 2026 earnings release.

CR-001 is an investigational tetravalent bispecific antibody that combines blockade of PD-1 and VEGF, per Crescent's Q2 2026 earnings release. The ASCEND trial (NCT07335497) is a global, open-label Phase 1/2 study evaluating CR-001 across multiple solid tumor types, including non-small cell lung cancer, gastrointestinal cancers, and gynecological cancers, in both treatment-naïve and previously treated patients. The first patient was dosed on February 18, 2026, per Crescent's GlobeNewswire announcement from that date.

The July 30, 2026 earnings release describes ASCEND as positioned to generate datasets from hundreds of patients globally in monotherapy and standard-of-care chemotherapy combinations across several tumor types.

R&D expenses were $19.4 million for the three months ended June 30, 2026, up from $12.1 million in the same period of 2025, per the July 30, 2026 earnings release.

What's next, per the July 30, 2026 earnings release: proof-of-concept data from the ASCEND trial in Q1 2027, with the trial continuing to enroll across NSCLC, gastrointestinal, and gynecological cancer indications in both monotherapy and combination arms.