IPO FILING: Adnexus Therapeutics, Targeting Avastin (ADNX, BMY)

ADNEXUS THERAPEUTICS, INC. has filed to come public via an IPO with the filed amount to sell up to $86,250,000 in common stock.  Adnexus has taken the proposed ADNX ticker on NASDAQ.  Lehman and UBS have been given the lead manager status, and Cowen & Co. and Lazard Capital are listed as co-managers.

This is purely a pre-development stage company in biotech.  The company’s goal is to build a leading biotechnology business that discovers, develops and commercializes its novel, proprietary drug class that it call Adnectins, which are said to have competitive therapeutic, manufacturing and commercial advantages over antibodies and small molecules. It generates Adnectins from human fibronectin by using proprietary protein engineering system called PROfusion. Adnexus scientists engineer trillions of protein variations at a time in order to find the optimal Adnectin drug using this system and patent estate ‘to lead a new era in targeted biologics.’

It has a target and it has a key partner.  Its first Adnectin, Angiocept, is an antagonist of the VEGFR-2 pathway and is in clinical development in the United States.  Unlike Avastin, Sutent and Nexavar, the three approved agents in this market, Angiocept is designed to be both a potent and highly specific VEGFR-2 pathway antagonist. Adnexus is conducting phase 1 clinical trial of Angiocept in the United States in oncology patients and plans to move into multiple Phase II trials with the first starting in 2008.  The first Adnectin-PROfusion alliance is with Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) and includes up to 6 programs based on 4 targets in oncology. From this alliance, Adnexus is eligible to receive development milestones from Bristol Myers of $211.5 million for the first product directed to a certain target of the first program and $141.0 million per program for each of 5 other potential programs, plus a sales milestone of $131.0 million per program, in addition to escalating double-digit royalties on product sales.

Jon C. Ogg
August 22, 2007