Alzheon, a biotech firm developing small molecule therapies targeted at Alzheimer’s disease, is set to go public on Wednesday, October 24, 2018.
The company laid out the terms of its initial public offer last month, saying it intends to raise $35 million by offering a total of 2.5 million shares of its common stock at a price of between $13 to $15 apiece.
Shares of the company will trade under the symbol “ALZH” on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Alzheon would command a fully diluted market value of $196 million at the midpoint of the proposed price range.
ThinkEquity and H.C. Wainwright & Co. are underwriting the offering. The two have an option to purchase an additional 375,000 additional shares of common stock if they wish.
Alzheon’s lead product candidate is ALZ-801, which is currently under phase Ib clinical trial in the US in Alzheimer’s disease patients. The company also has another preclinical candidate known as ALZ-1903, which is a potent inhibitor of beta-amyloid misfolding.
In its IPO prospectus, Alzheon says, “We believe that we are the only company developing a clinical-stage small molecule with a mechanism of action designed to prevent the misfolding and aggregation of beta-amyloid protein into neurotoxic oligomers. If ALZ-801 is approved, we believe it has the potential to be among the first drugs to intervene in a key underlying mechanism of Alzheimer’s disease, or AD.”
“The active ingredient of ALZ-801, tramiprosate, was evaluated in 16 clinical trials conducted by BELLUS Health (formerly Neurochem), or Bellus, including trials in AD, with over 2,000 patients. In these trials, a favorable safety profile was observed, and in our post hoc analyses of data from these trials, we observed promising clinical signals in a subset of patients with two copies of the APOE4 gene, or APOE4/4 homozygotes, who have greater beta-amyloid burden and develop AD earlier.”
Alzheon is under the leadership of President and Chief Executive Officer Martin Tolar, who founded the company five years ago. The management plans to use the proceeds from the offering to launch a Phase 2b clinical trial of ALZ-801 next year in the US.
It also intends to start a Phase 1b clinical trial to evaluate the plasma pharmacokinetics of ALZ-801 in Alzheimer disease patients who possess one or two copies of the APOE4 gene before the end of 2018.
Alzheon, Inc. Company Profile
Alzheon, Inc. operates as a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company in the United States and internationally. The company’s lead product is ALZ-801, an orally administered inhibitor of beta amyloid misfolding, which is in Phase III clinical trial for treating Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders.
Its lead preclinical candidate compound includes ALZ-1903, a chemical entity and potent inhibitor of beta amyloid misfolding. The company was founded in 2013 and is based in Framingham, Massachusetts. – Yahoo Finance
