Health and Healthcare

Harpoon Therapeutics Files for IPO

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Harpoon Therapeutics has filed an S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its initial public offering (IPO). No pricing details were mentioned in the filing, although the offering is valued up to $86.25 million. The firm intends to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol HARP.

The underwriters for the offering are Citigroup, Leerink Partners, Canaccord Genuity and Wedbush PacGrow.

This is a clinical-stage immunotherapy company developing a novel class of T cell engagers that harness the power of the body’s immune system to treat patients suffering from cancer and other diseases. T cell engagers are engineered proteins that direct a patient’s own T cells to kill target cells that express specific proteins, or antigens, carried by the target cells.

Using the proprietary Tri-specific T cell Activating Construct (TriTAC) platform, the company is developing a pipeline of novel T cell engagers (TriTACs) initially focused on the treatment of solid tumors and hematologic malignancies.

Since commencing operations in 2015, Harpoon has created four TriTAC product candidates, and management expects to have four TriTACs in clinical development by the end of 2020. Its lead TriTAC product candidate, HPN424, is currently in a Phase 1 clinical trial for the treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer from which the firm expects to provide preliminary data in 2019. The second TriTAC product candidate, HPN536, is expected to enter clinical development in the first half of 2019 for the treatment of ovarian cancer and other mesothelin-expressing solid tumors.

The company intends to use the net proceeds from this offering as follows:

  • To fund the clinical development of HPN424 (PSMA-targeting TriTAC) and HPN536 (MSLN-targeting TriTAC).
  • The remaining proceeds to fund the development of the pipeline, including HPN217 (BCMA-targeting TriTAC), DLL3-Targeting TriTAC, ProTriTAC programs and discovery programs, and for other general corporate purposes, which may include the hiring of additional personnel, capital expenditures and the costs of operating as a public company.

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