OS Therapies will list on the NYSE American stock exchange this morning via a $6.4 million IPO that the biotech will use to push forward with its immunotherapy and antibody-drug conjugate plans.
The company previously set out expectations for a $10 million IPO over a year ago, but these were shelved. Yesterday, OS Therapies confirmed that it will be joining the stock exchange this morning, offering 1.6 million shares at $4 apiece.
The IPO should bring in gross proceeds of $6.4 million, or $6 million once underwriting discounts and commissions are deducted, the company said in a June 31 release. There’s the potential for this to be boosted by a further $960,000 if underwriters take up their 45-day option to acquire an additional 240,000 shares at the same price.
The priority for the money will be the clinical development of OS Therapies’ two existing programs. One of these, OST-HER2, is already in the clinic. OST-HER2 uses a HER2 bioengineered form of the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes to trigger an immune response against cancer cells expressing HER2.
The biotech read out some initial data from a phase 2b trial of OST-HER2 in patients with resected, recurrent osteosarcoma in June, which it said at the time showed a one-year event-free survival rate of 32.5%.
The program has also completed a phase 1 study of OST-HER2 “primarily in breast cancer patients, in addition to showing strong preclinical efficacy data in various models of breast cancer,” the company noted.
OS Therapies’ other main priority is OST-tADC, which the company describes as a next-gen ADC platform designed to “release multiple therapeutic agents selectively within the tumor microenvironment, which experiences lower pH levels than the rest of the body.”
So far, the biotech has put OST-tADC through initial safety and efficacy proof of concept tests in mice models of cancer.
Remaining funds from the IPO will be used to “discover and develop new product candidates, as well as for working capital and other general corporate purposes,” the company added.
At $6 million, OS Therapies’ IPO is a minnow compared to the majority of biotech IPOs this year, which have stretched into at least eight or often nine figures and have typically listed on the higher-profile Nasdaq exchange. CG Oncology continues to hold the top position so far in 2024 with its $380 million offering that kicked off the year.