Visterra Readies for IPO

Visterra 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, but the offering is valued up to $69 million. The company intends to list its shares on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol VIST.

The underwriters for the offering are Leerink Partners, Stifel, Needham and Wedbush PacGrow.

This is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on applying its novel Hierotope platform to identify unique disease targets and to design and engineer innovative antibody-based therapies that are intended to be effective as a single-dose administration. The company believes that its platform enables it to address the significant unmet need for effective therapies to treat infectious diseases caused by organisms that have a high degree of diversity among strains, frequent mutations and a high prevalence of treatment resistance.

The most advanced product candidate, VIS410, is a monoclonal antibody (mAb) that Visterra is developing for the treatment of hospitalized patients with influenza A, regardless of the viral strain. The company recently conducted a randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 2a clinical trial of VIS410, in healthy subjects who were inoculated with a strain of the influenza A virus. The Phase 2a study achieved its primary endpoint with statistical significance.

In the second half of 2016, Visterra plans to initiate a global Phase 2a clinical trial in ambulatory patients diagnosed with influenza A and a Phase 2b clinical trial in hospitalized patients diagnosed with influenza A.
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The company has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), an agency of the U.S. government’s Department of Health and Human Services, that includes a 40-month base period with committed funding of $29.1 million for the development of VIS410 and options that, if exercised in full by BARDA, would extend the contract to 60 months and increase the total funding for the development of VIS410 to $204.5 million.

Visterra’s second product candidate, VIS513, is a mAb for the treatment of dengue. The development of VIS513 is being advanced through strategic relationships with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), an agency of the Singapore government, in Singapore and Serum Institute of India Private Limited (SIIPL) in select territories. Under the collaboration with A*STAR, it expects that a Phase 1 clinical trial of VIS513 will be initiated in the second half of 2016.

The company intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to fund its manufacturing costs and research and preclinical development. The remainder will be used for working capital, debt service and general corporate purposes.