A Tucson-based company developing cancer-prevention drugs has withdrawn its initial public offering of stock.
But Cancer Prevention Pharmaceuticals will keep moving forward with trials of its cancer-prevention drugs with the backing of its pharma industry partners, the company’s CEO said.
In a filing with federal regulators, the company said it was withdrawing an IPO registration it filed in December 2015 “due to prevailing market conditions.”
The company was looking to raise about $30 million and was seeking a listing on the New York Stock Exchange’s small-cap market. Proceeds of the stock offering were to advance the company’s clinical trials.
Jeff Jacob, chairman and CEO of Cancer Prevention Pharmacueticals, said that after presenting the share offer to potential investors, the company decided to hold off on the public offering.
“We just tested the market. We didn’t like it,” Jacob said. “It’s a very tough year for biotech companies and we decided we didn’t have to do it, so we’ll wait until the market conditions are better.”
Meanwhile, Jacob said the company expects continued support from two major pharmaceutical partners, adding that now that the IPO has been shelved the company can again pursue private equity capital, if needed.
The initial pricing of the company’s shares, at $12 to $14, was not a problem, he said.
“It just has to do with the timing, the kind of investors you get, the overall market conditions,” he said, adding that the company has the “luxury” of having major pharma partners to help it continue its drug development.
In January, Maryland-based Sucampo Pharmaceuticals agreed to an option to buy an exclusive license to commercialize the local company’s flagship drug combination product, CPP-1X/sulindac, in North America, investing $10 million investment in stock and convertible debt.
In 2014, Cancer Prevention Pharmaceuticals signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Swiss drug company Tillotts Pharma AG for European and Japanese rights to develop and commercialize the local company’s drug to prevent gastrointestinal cancer.
The Tucson company says it has received $11 million in license and development fees under the Tillots agreement, with the potential for additional payments of more than $100 million.
Jacob said the company has the capital to continue its clinical trials.
Cancer Prevention Pharmaceuticals is conducting a Phase III clinical trial of its drug for use in preventing a rare, teenage-onset disease called familial adenomatous polyposis, which almost always leads to colon cancer.
That trial recently was fully enrolled and is expected to take about 18 months to complete, Jacob said.
The company also is involved in other, earlier-stage trials for the drug’s use to ward off relapses of neuroblastoma (a childhood cancer), and in treatment of gastric cancer and early-onset Type 1 diabetes.
Cancer Prevention Pharmaceuticals licensed its drug technology from the University of Arizona and the University of California-Irvine.
The company was co-founded by retired UA professor and Arizona Cancer Center member Eugene Gerner and Dr. Frank Meyskens Jr., an oncologist and former Arizona Cancer Center member who is now associate vice chancellor of health sciences at UC-Irvine.
