Wave Life Sciences has filed an amended S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its initial public offering (IPO). The company expects to price its 5 million shares in the range of $15 to $17, with an overallotment option for an additional 750,000 shares. At the maximum price the entire offering is valued up to $97.75 million. The company intends to list on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol WVE.

The underwriters for the offering are Jefferies, Leerink Partners, JMP Securities and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

This is a preclinical biopharmaceutical company with an innovative and proprietary synthetic chemistry drug development platform used to design, develop and commercialize a broad pipeline of first-in-class or best-in-class nucleic acid therapeutic candidates. Nucleic acid therapeutics have the potential to address diseases that have been difficult to treat with small molecule drugs or biologics and have emerged as a large and promising class of drugs.

The company is initially developing nucleic acid therapeutics that target genetic defects to either reduce the expression of disease-promoting proteins or transform the production of dysfunctional mutant proteins into the production of functional proteins. The platform is driven by innovative and proprietary stereochemistry technology, enabling Wave Life to rationally design, optimize and manufacture stereopure nucleic acid therapeutics, which it believes possess drug properties that are superior to the stereoisomer mixtures of oligonucleotides currently on the market or in development by others.

This platform can be used to design therapies that utilize any of the major molecular mechanisms employed by nucleic acid therapeutics, including antisense, ribonucleic acid interference exon skipping and others.

The company intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to fund additional preclinical studies and clinical trials for its pipeline. The remainder of the net proceeds will be used to advance discovery programs, to expand pipeline, for working capital and for other general corporate purposes. Wave Life may also use a portion of the net proceeds to acquire, license and invest in complementary products, technologies or businesses; however, it currently has no agreements or commitments to do so.

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