Poseida Therapeutics Forges Ahead with a Filing for $115M IPO

California-based Poseida Therapeutics made headlines on Monday when it filed a new preliminary prospectus for a $115 million initial public offering (IPO). The company is focused on developing cell and gene therapies based on a proprietary DNA modification, gene editing and delivery technology.

Initially, Poseida had been aiming for an IPO in January of last year. However, the company changed its plans after it raised $142 million in a Series C funding round. It received a $75 million equity investment from Novartis Pharma AG, and also had support from new investors including Aisling Capital Management, Pentwater Capital Management and Perceptive Advisors.

“We welcome the support and investment from Novartis, a leader in the cell and gene therapy field,” said Eric Ostertag M.D., Ph.D., chief executive officer of Poseida, following the closure of the Series C financing round. “They are joined by an impressive group of new investors whose commitment enables us to accelerate the pursuit of our bold vision to create gene therapy product candidates that could result in single-treatment cures for numerous oncologic indications and orphan genetic diseases, with an initial focus on chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapies.”

Poseida has several CAR-T product candidates, which are manufactured utilizing its non-viral DNA modification system, which results in a high percentage of stem cell memory cells (Tscm). Tscm cells are the only T cell that is self-renewing and long-lived, which can translate into more efficacious, less toxic and durable product candidates.

Some of Poseida’s product candidates include P-BCMA-101, an autologous CAR-T therapy for the treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma; P-PSMA-101, an autologous CAR-T product candidate targeting PSMA-specific cancer cells in castrate resistant prostate cancer; and P-MUC1C-101, an autologous CAR-T product candidate in late-stage preclinical development for numerous solid tumor indications.

Poseida announced in May 2019 that P-BCMA-101 had received orphan drug designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of relapsed and/or refractory multiple myeloma.

“FDA orphan designation is an important regulatory milestone in the continued development and commercialization of P-BCMA-101,” said Ostertag, at the time of the announcement. “P-BCMA-101 has demonstrated outstanding potency, with strikingly low rates of toxicity in our phase 1 clinical trial. In fact, the FDA has approved fully outpatient dosing in our Phase 2 trial starting in the second quarter of 2019.”

In May of this year, Poseida also announced that it had made progress with P-PSMA-101 by dosing its first patient with the candidate in a Phase 1 clinical trial, evaluating the autologous CAR-T therapeutic product for the treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. The goal of the Phase 1 study is to determine which dose is best for patients with the fewest side effects. P-PSMA-101 is designed to target prostate-specific membrane antigen, which is expressed on metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer cells.

“Extending our gene engineering technology to solid tumors represents the next opportunity in oncology where we believe our proprietary platforms and approach have advantages over others in the space,” said Ostertag. “Our platform technologies, which include the piggyBac DNA Modification System and Cas-CLOVER site-specific gene editing system, are driving our diverse pipeline of next-generation CAR-T treatments for hematologic and solid tumors, as well as gene therapies addressing rare diseases.”

Poseida remains dedicated to engineering a wide array of next-generation cell and gene therapeutics using its various platform technologies.