Chris Kirk (left) is chief scientific officer and John Fowler is CEO of South San Francisco biotech startup Kezar Life Sciences.

TODD JOHNSON | SAN FRANCISCO BUSINESS TIMES

Cromwell Schubarth, TechFlash EditorJun 21, 2018, 7:07am PDT

Shares of Kezar Life Sciences Inc. jumped 18 percent on Thursday after it raised $75 million in an upsized IPO that hit the middle of its price target range.

Qiming Venture Partners U.S. is one of the investors of Kezar's series B financing, which was led by Mark McDade, the managing partner of Qiming U.S. on July 2017.

The South San Francisco biotech sold 5 million shares at $15. It was expected to sell 4.7 million shares for between $14 and $16.

The stock (NASDAQ:KZR) opened at $20 a share and rose as high as $20.48 before finishing its Wall Street debut at $17.75.

Insiders were expected to buy $30 million of the offering, representing about 40 percent of the deal.

The South San Francisco-based focuses on small-molecule therapeutics for autoimmune diseases and cancer. Its biggest stakeholders are Morningside Venture Investments (15.5 percent), Cormorant Asset Managers (9.9 percent), Onyx Therapeutics (8.4 percent), and Cowen Healthcare Investments (7.6 percent). 

The company is set to begin trading on Nasdaq with the symbol "KZR."

It is the second Bay Area biotech IPO of the week, following a $106 million debut by San Francisco-based Eidos Therapeutics Inc. That company's stock (NASDAQ:EIDX) rose 36 percent above its offering price on its first day of trading but fell by about 5 percent on Thursday to close at $21.94.