Autolus Therapeutics aiming for NASDAQ IPO
British T cell player, Autolus Therapeutics Ltd. wants to go NASDAQ selling 7.8 million American Depositary Shares (ADSs) at at least US-$15, totaling in US$117m. Through a greenshoe option, Autolus want to offer additional 1,171,875 ADS at the IPO price.
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Jefferies LLC are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. Wells Fargo Securities, LLC and William Blair & Company, L.L.C. are acting as lead managers.
The company is well-financed. Last September, Autolus added a US$80m Series C equity funding to US$96m raised in previous financing rounds led by Syncona Ltd., Woodford Investment Management, and Arix Bioscience plc.
Autolus T cell therapies target the the blood cancer ALL either through CD19 (in Phase I) a similar approach to approved CAR-T cell therapies from Novartis and Gilead Sciences, or through targeting CD19 and CD22 (Phase I/II). The company’s CD19 candidate however is claimed "next-generation" due to its fast CD19 dissociation kinetics, which allows to target many CD19+ cells very rapidly. Furthermore, the companys CAR-T cells target CD269 and TACI to treat multiple myeloma (Phase I/II). An additional candidate undergoing Phase I safety testing targets GD2, a disialoganglioside expressed on tumours of neuroectodermal origin, to treat the rare childhood brain cancer neuroblastoma.
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