Sutro Biopharma Gears Up for IPO

Sutro Biopharma has filed an S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding its initial public offering (IPO). No pricing details were given in the filing, although the offering is valued up to $75 million. The company intends to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol STRO.

The underwriters for the offering are Cowen, Piper Jaffray, JMP Securities and Wedbush PacGrow.

This is a clinical-stage drug discovery, development and manufacturing company focused on leveraging its proprietary integrated cell-free protein synthesis platform, XpressCF, to create a broad variety of optimally designed, next-generation protein therapeutics for cancer and autoimmune disorders.

The company aims to design therapeutics using the most potent modalities, including cytokine-based immuno-oncology therapeutics, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and bispecific antibodies that are directed primarily against clinically validated targets where the current standard of care is suboptimal.

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Management believes its platform allows it to accelerate the discovery and development of potential first-in-class and best-in-class molecules by enabling the rapid and systematic evaluation of protein structure-activity relationships to create optimized homogeneous product candidates.

Sutro has a few high-level collaborations for its platform. To date, all of its collaborations have provided about $330 million in payments, which includes $43.7 million in investments in stock. These collaborations include:

We have granted Merck the right to jointly develop up to three research programs directed to cytokine derivatives for cancer and autoimmune disorders, including rights to certain prior cytokine-based research efforts.

We have granted Celgene the right to jointly develop up to four anti-cancer bispecific antibodies and/or ADCs directed primarily to immuno-oncology targets. The lead candidate generated for this collaboration is a novel ADC therapeutic directed against the target BCMA for which an IND submission is expected in early 2019.

The company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to further develop its pipeline and technology platform. The remainder will be put toward working capital and general corporate purposes.

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