Oncopeptides raises €68m in IPO

In its IPO underwritten by ABG Sundal Collier, Carnegie Investment Bank and DNB Markets, Oncopeptides AB was valued at €199.2m through the sale of 14.1 million shares at SEK46. The company, which started Phase II clinical trials of its blood cancer lead Ygalo (melflufen)in January, said it will use the funds for Phase III testing. “We have high hopes that the study will succeed and that we after that will be able to commercialise Ygalo," Oncopetides CEO Jakob Lindberg said in a statement. Ygalo is a treatment for patients with late-stage relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma, for which the FDA and the EMA have granted orphan drug designation. 

Ygalo uses the cancer cell’s own chemical composition to stop cancer growth. The intravenously administered prodrug of melphalan is a peptidase potentiated DNA alkylator. It is being rapidly transported into cells where it is cleaved by peptidase enzymes. The peptidases act as a pump, drawing in more and more cancer fighting molecules as each Ygalo molecule is cleaved and can hardly leave myeloma cells. Ygalo differs from current cytotoxics through its ability to achieve higher concentrations of cancer killing molecules in cancer cells without a corresponding increase in damage to the patient’s bone marrow. Pre-clinical studies showed that Ygalo kills on average 50 times more cancer cells than similar classes of treatment.