Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals has registered an S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its initial public offering (IPO). No pricing details were given by the company in the filing, but the offering is valued up to $57.5 million. The company intends to list on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol SBPH.

The underwriters for the offering are William Blair, BTIG and Wedbush PacGrow.

This is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of a novel class of therapeutics using its proprietary small molecule nucleic acid hybrid (SMNH) chemistry platform. The SMNH compounds are small segments of nucleic acids that are designed to selectively target and modulate the activity of specific proteins implicated in various disease states.

Spring Bank is developing its most advanced SMNH product candidate, SB 9200, for the treatment of viral diseases. The company has designed SB 9200 to selectively activate within infected cells the cellular proteins retinoic acid-inducible gene 1 and nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-containing protein 2 to inhibit viral replication and to cause the induction of intracellular interferon signaling pathways for antiviral defense. The company believes that SB 9200 may play an important role in antiviral therapy by modulating the body’s immune response through its mechanisms of action to fight viral infections.

Currently, Spring Bank plans to focus on the development of SB 9200 for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

In the filing, the company said:

In 2014, we completed a Phase 1 clinical trial of SB 9200 in 38 non-cirrhotic patients infected with the hepatitis C virus, or HCV, who had not received any prior antiviral treatment. The two-stage trial was designed to evaluate the safety and tolerability, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and antiviral activity of ascending doses of the oral formulation of SB 9200 and to demonstrate proof of principle of the mechanisms of action of SB 9200. SB 9200 was well tolerated in all dose groups in the trial, and no dose-limiting toxicities or systemic interferon-like side effects such as flu-like symptoms or fever were observed. Additionally, antiviral activity was seen at all dose levels except for the lowest dose cohort. We believe that the data from the Phase 1 clinical trial, together with data from preclinical and toxicology studies that we have conducted in animal models, support the development of SB 9200 for the treatment of chronic HBV and RSV.

The company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to develop its pipeline and for working capital and general corporate purposes.

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