Bankrupt BIND Therapeutics Reveals Two More Bidders Join Pfizer's Stalking Horse Bid
July 25, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
On July 1, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Bind Therapeutics announced that Pfizer had been approved as the stalking horse bidder for the majority of the company’s assets. Today the company announced that two additional bidders had joined the auction.
A stalking horse bid is when a company agrees to lay down a baseline bid for a company’s assets. It is a way of testing the market for its assets and avoiding low bids as part of or before a court auction.
BIND has developed targeted and programmable compounds called Accurins. They are engineered to target specific cells and tissues and delivery drugs to the disease site. The company has ongoing collaborations with Pfizer, AstraZeneca , Hoffmann-La Roche (ROG), Merck & Co. , Macrophage Therapeutics, Synergy Pharmaceuticals, PeptiDream (TYO) and Affilogic.
Pfizer agreed to buy most of BIND’s assets for about $20 million in cash, as well as to take on various contractual liabilities of BIND. The auction is scheduled for July 25, 2016 for the assets, as long as it receives qualified overbids by July 22, which apparently it has.
BIND filed voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 1, 2016.
There is no word on who the competing companies are or the size of their bids.
As part of the Chapter 11 filing, BIND agreed to pay-down $4 million in principal on its existing principal loan balance of about $12.4 million. The secured lender was Hercules Technology III, LP, an affiliate of Hercules Capital (HTCG).
“I am pleased that we were able to reach a mutual agreement with Hercules Capital that enables BIND to continue operations and continue exploring financial and strategic alternatives,” said Andrew Hirsch, BIND’s president and chief executive officer, on May 19 in a statement. “Since our restructuring on April 6, we have been actively evaluating avenues to raise additional capital, including through the capital markets, a strategic collaboration with one or more parties, or the license, sale or divestiture of some of our proprietary technologies, including a sale of the company. We appreciate Hercules’ continued willingness to work in partnership towards a mutually acceptable agreement which culminated in today’s agreement.”
“BIND Therapeutics has been a portfolio company of Hercules since 2010,” said Scott Bluestein, Hercules chief investment officer, in a statement on the same day. “Over the last several weeks, both pre and post petition, we worked tirelessly towards a resolution that would be mutually acceptable and allow the Company to drive towards its stated goal of exploring strategic alternatives following its April 6 announcement. We are thankful that the parties were able to reach agreement and look forward to what we hope to be the successful conclusion to the strategic process that is now underway.”
Despite the company’s financial problems, it seems to have promising technology. On April 6, it announced results from two Phase II clinical trials, iNSITE 1 in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) of squamous histology, and the iNSITE 2 trial in cervical and head and neck cancers. In the iNSITE 1 trial, BIND-014 showed a 52.5 percent 6-week disease control rate for the study population and a 70.0 percent rate in the protocol population, exceeding the study’s definition of success of 65 percent. The iNSITE 2 trial, however, failed to meet its primary endpoint and was halted.
“While the single-arm design of these trials precludes definitive conclusions, we remain especially intrigued by the iNSITE 1 data in squamous histology non-small cell lung cancer patients,” said Hagop Youssoufian, chief medical officer of BIND, in a statement. “We believe these data provide additional clinical validation that Accurins successfully widen the therapeutic window of conventional docetaxel. Taken together, we believe these data justify further development of BIND-014 in clinical settings where improved safety and tolerability may be valuable to patients.”