Deciphera Pharmaceuticals has filed an amended 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 $100 million, although this number is usually just a placeholder. The company intends to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol DCPH.

The underwriters for the offering are JPMorgan, Piper Jaffray and JMP Securities.

This clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company is developing new drugs to improve the lives of cancer patients by addressing key mechanisms of drug resistance that limit the rate and durability of response of many cancer therapies. Its targeted, small molecule drug candidates, designed using the proprietary kinase switch control inhibitor platform, inhibit the activation of kinases, an important family of enzymes that, when mutated or overexpressed, are known to be directly involved in the growth and spread of many cancers.

The company has built a diverse pipeline of wholly owned, orally administered drug candidates that include three clinical-stage and two research-stage programs. Management has designed the firm’s lead drug candidate DCC-2618 to inhibit the full spectrum of mutant or amplified KIT and PDGFRα kinases that drive cancers such as gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST).

Deciphera is studying DCC-2618 in an ongoing Phase 1 trial in patients with advanced malignancies. The firm recently presented results from this Phase 1 trial that demonstrate clinical proof-of-concept at well tolerated doses in 57 heavily pretreated patients with KIT-driven or PDGFRα-driven GIST. In this study the firm observed a disease control rate of 91% at eight weeks in 33 patients, 76% at 12 weeks in 25 patients and 57% at 24 weeks in 21 patients.

The firm intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to further fund its pipeline, as well as for working capital and general corporate purposes.

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