Cara Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: CARA) watched its shares slide as the week came to a close after the company reported that it had priced its secondary offering. The company has priced its 4.45 million shares of common stock at $18 per share, with an overallotment option for an additional 667,500 shares. At this price the entire offering is valued up to $92.12 million.

The underwriters for this offering are Piper Jaffray, Stifel, Canaccord Genuity, Needham, Janney Montgomery Scott and H.C. Wainwright.

This is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing new chemical entities designed to alleviate pain and pruritus by selectively targeting kappa opioid receptors. It is developing a novel and proprietary class of product candidates that target the body’s peripheral nervous system and have demonstrated efficacy in clinical trials of patients with moderate-to-severe pain without inducing many of the undesirable side effects typically associated with currently available pain therapeutics.

Cara’s most advanced product candidate, CR845, is a new chemical entity that is designed to produce pain relief by specifically stimulating kappa, rather than mu, opioid receptors outside of the central nervous system. Intravenous (IV) CR845 has demonstrated significant pain relief and a favorable safety and tolerability profile in three Phase 2 clinical trials in patients with acute postoperative pain.

According to Cara Therapeutics:

The proceeds of the offering are expected to be used to fund the company’s clinical and research development activities, including the completion of the Phase 3 program for I.V. CR845 in uremic pruritus, two Phase 3 trials of I.V. CR845 in acute pain and a Phase 2b trial of oral CR845 in osteoarthritis pain, as well as for working capital and general corporate purposes.

Shares of Cara were last seen down 5% at $17.79 on Friday, with a consensus analyst price target of $25.75 and a 52-week trading range of $4.35 to $20.90.

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