As the bear market continues to hold down biotechs of several shapes and sizes, one company is selling shares to extend its runway.
Boston-based X4 Pharmaceuticals announced Friday that it has agreed to sell over 50 million shares of common stock to certain investors in a PIPE financing. The company is anticipating that gross proceeds from the PIPE will be approximately $55 million and close on July 6, with a purchase set at $1.09.
On Thursday, X4 also changed its loan and security agreement with Hercules Capital to extend its loan facility by up to 12 months into 2024. This amendment results in a potential reduction of X4’s cash burn by $20 million over the interest-only period, the company said.
X4 expects to use the funds for clinical development and work on lead candidate mavorixafor, which is intended to treat a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma known as Waldernström’s macroglobulinemia. The funds will also be used for working capital and other general uses.
The biotech’s new line of credit comes as it announced a deal with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) to develop mavorixafor in 2021, but also as it faces a huge pitfall in its stock price. X4 has recently been dipping into the penny stock range and has seen its price $XFOR plummet by over 60% since the beginning of the year.
Friday’s PIPE financing included new investors such as New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Acorn Bioventures and Lumira Ventures, as well as existing investors, including co-lead investor Bain Capital Life Sciences, OrbiMed, AXA Investment Managers and Hercules Capital.
One of Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson’s top picks in the pipeline — picked up in a $3.7 billion buyout 2 years ago — has just been sidelined in the US by a safety issue.
The pharma giant put out word early Thursday that the FDA has put their Phase III studies of tolebrutinib in multiple sclerosis and myasthenia gravis on partial clinical hold, halting enrollment and suspending dosing for patients who have been on the drug for less than 60 days. Patients who have completed at least 60 days of treatment can continue therapy as researchers explore a “limited” — but unspecified in Sanofi’s statement — number of cases of liver injury.
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Teva CEO Kåre Schultz has found his new R&D chief and CMO in Vertex’s ranks.
The global generics giant, which has some 3,500 staffers in the R&D group, has named Eric Hughes to the top research spot in the company. He’ll be replacing Hafrun Fridriksdottir, who held the role for close to five years, on Aug. 1.
Hughes hasn’t been at Vertex for long, though. He jumped from Novartis less than a year ago, after heading the immunology, hepatology & dermatology global development unit. Before that, he completed a five-year stint as head of early clinical research for the specialty discovery medicine department in the exploratory clinical & translational research group at Bristol Myers Squibb, according to his LinkedIn profile.
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On Tuesday, June 14, Endpoints News EIC John Carroll sat down with a group of biotech execs to discuss the bear market for industry stocks and how they were dealing with it. Here’s the conversation, which has been lightly edited for brevity.
Thank you, John. Hello everyone. My name’s Martin Meeson, I’m the CEO of Fujifilm Diosynth. For those of you who don’t know Fujifilm Diosynth, we operate in the development of clinical and commercial product scale up, we have facilities in Europe and the US, and around about 4,000 employees. We run on average about 150 programs, so when it comes to managing in turbulent times over the last two years, we’ve had quite a lot of experience of that. Not just keeping the clinical pipelines and the commercial pipelines open, but also our response to the pandemic and the molecules that we’ve had within there. One of the phrases that I coined probably about a year ago when we were talking at JP Morgan, was I talked about managing through turbulent times. Well, it’s become the fact that we are not managing and leading through these times, we are managing in them, which is why that’s really the purpose of and the topic that we’ve got today.
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Lonza has been expanding its reach across the globe, bringing sites in China and the US online this year, but now they are looking closer to home for their next major investment.
The Swiss manufacturer on Friday announced plans to construct a large-scale commercial drug fill and finish facility in the town of Stein, Switzerland. The new facility will be delivered through an investment of approximately CHF 500 million, or $519 million, and is expected to be completed in 2026. The facility will also be constructed on the same campus as Lonza’s current clinical drug product facility.
Amgen is taking social media followers around the world with its latest corporate campaign. Called “Places of Amgen,” the twice monthly posts highlight the biopharma’s different offices and sites – and the people who work there.
Each post runs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram with details about the work Amgen does in that location, when it was established, comments from people who work there and other interesting facts. The most recent one about Paris, France, for example, notes that Amgen France last year signed a French association charter committed to the inclusion of LBGT+ people in the workplace.
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Two weeks ago, Biohaven hit an all-time high in weekly Nurtec prescriptions. CEO Vlad Coric attributes at least some of that success to a new interactive Twitter campaign that encourages patients to free their feed of potential migraine triggers.
Earlier this month, Biohaven in partnership with Twitter launched the #RelieveYourFeed campaign that allows users to customize their app settings based on their migraine triggers.
Over the past few months, oncologists have been talking a lot about the ASCO conference. Not surprising considering its import and the study data presented, but what may be less expected is the second most talked about topic of health equity.
That’s according to data from The Harris Poll and the new expert network the researcher is building out. While the company has been doing deep data dives into specific health issues or conditions for pharma clients, it’s now monitoring influencer networks of therapy area specialists to find out what experts are really thinking about.
As Cytokinetics traded near its one-year high earlier this week, execs decided to take on a load of debt. But investors aren’t liking what they’ve seen.
The San Francisco biotech announced after market close Wednesday that it would raise $450 million in debt in the form of a convertible senior notes offering, sending the company’s stock $CYTK down nearly 20% on Thursday. The move was ostensibly made to satiate investor concerns, but the market did not react accordingly.
As it works to pad the case for expanding its Ayvakit and Gavreto labels, Blueprint Medicines has lined up $1.25 billion in funding, with some of that money seemingly earmarked for acquisitions or pipeline expansion projects.
Following the likes of BioCryst, Cytokinetics and MorphoSys, Blueprint is aiming to monetize the royalties of its RET+ non-small cell lung cancer and thyroid cancer drug Gavreto with Royalty Pharma. The investment group will dole out $175 million upfront and might tack on another $165 million in biobucks as part of Blueprint’s royalties receivable from net sales of the drug by Roche outside the US, sans China.
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Bioscience & Technology Business Center The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
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