Health and Healthcare

Bellicum Sets Pricing Terms for IPO

Bellicum Pharmaceuticals filed an amended S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its initial public offering (IPO). The price for the offering was set between $15 and $17 on 6.25 million shares, valuing the filing up to $122.2 million. The company will list on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol BLCM.

The underwriters for the offering are Jefferies, Citigroup, Trout Capital and Piper Jaffray.

Bellicum is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing novel cellular immunotherapies for various forms of cancer, including both hematological cancers and solid tumors, as well as orphan inherited blood disorders. According to the company, cellular immunotherapy has the potential to transform medicine by harnessing immune cells, principally T cells, to attack and eliminate harmful diseased cells in the body. However, unlike traditional small molecule and biologic therapies, which are predictably metabolized and eliminated from the body, cellular immunotherapies are unpredictable and uncontrollable. Bellicum uses its proprietary Chemical Induction of Dimerization, or CID, technology platform to engineer and then control components of the immune system in real time. By incorporating its CID platform, product candidates may offer better safety and efficacy outcomes than are seen with current cellular immunotherapies.

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The filing goes on to say:

Our lead clinical product candidate, BPX-501, is an adjunct T-cell therapy administered after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, or HSCT, and is currently being evaluated in multiple Phase 1/2 clinical trials. Our next clinical product candidate, BPX-201, is a dendritic cell cancer vaccine in a Phase 1 clinical trial for the treatment of metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer, or mCRPC, targeting the prostate-specific membrane antigen, or PSMA. Dendritic cells are specialized cells that are key regulators of the immune system that process and present antigens on the cell surface to T cells in order to activate the T cells. We are also focused on developing next-generation chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR, T-cell therapies and T-cell receptor, or TCR, therapies and are planning to advance several product candidates into human clinical trials, including: (1) BPX-401, a CAR-T product candidate for hematological cancers that express the CD19 antigen, (2) BPX-601, a CAR-T product candidate for solid tumors overexpressing the prostate stem cell antigen, or PSCA, and (3) BPX-701, a TCR product candidate for solid tumors expressing the preferentially-expressed antigen in melanoma, or PRAME.

Bellicum expects to receive $90.2 million from the offering, or approximately $104.1 million if the underwriters exercise their overallotment option fully. The company plans to use roughly $21 million to fund its ongoing and planned phase 1/2 clinical trials of BPX-501. About $30 million will go to fund the pre-clinical studies for BPX-401, BPX-601 and BPX-701. The remainder will go toward funding other studies and trials, as well as to obtain additional capital to support operations.

FULL SEC FILING

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