Two Months After Raising $64 Million, Eidos Therapeutics Announces IPO
On April 5, San Francisco’s Eidos Therapeutics closed on a Series B financing round worth $64 million. Now the company has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to raise $115 million through an initial public offering (IPO).
The funds raised are expected to be used to advance the company’s small molecule product candidate, AG10, into Phase II clinical trials and continue to prep for Phase III trials. AG10 is being developed to treat transthyretin (TTR) amyloidosis (ATTR).
AG10 is an oral small molecule that selectively stabilizes tetrameric TTR, stopping the molecular events that cause ATTR. ATTR has three distinct diseases that make up the ATTR family: wild-type ATTR cardiomyopathy; mutant ATTR cardiomyopathy; and ATTR polyneuropathy. Worldwide, there are about 200,000 patients, 40,000 patients and 10,000 patients with the diseases, respectively.
All three types of the disease are progressive and fatal. No disease-modifying therapeutics have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
In the company’s S-1 filing with the SEC, it stated, “In our Phase I clinical trial, healthy volunteers were administered AG10 and at the highest tested dose we observed greater than 95 percent stabilization of TTR, on average, across the entire dosing interval and 100 percent stabilization at peak blood levels. In contrast, tafamidis at 20 mg and 80 mg provided approximately 45 percent and 60 percent stabilization at peak blood levels, respectively, in our preclinical studies. We believe these observations of ASG10’s comparatively higher stabilization are attributable to advantages in AG10’s binding mode and specificity for binding to TTR and not other plasma proteins.”
On May 3, Eidos dosed the first patient in its Phase II trial of AG10 in patients with ATTR cardiomyopathy. It plans to enroll 45 symptomatic ATTR cardiomyopathy patients in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. A minimum of 30 percent of patients in the trial will have mutant ATTR cardiomyopathy, with the rest having wild type ATTR cardiomyopathy. They will be randomized one-to-one-to-one to placebo or one of two different AG10 doses on a background of stable heart failure therapy. If well tolerated, the company expects the treatment regimen to run 28 days.
“ATTR cardiomyopathy represents a significant unmet need with a poor prognosis and limited existing treatment options, and further, the prevalence of the disease is increasing dramatically with improved awareness and novel, non-invasive diagnostic techniques,” said Rodney Falk, director of the cardiac amyloidosis program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, in a statement. “The preclinical and Phase I data describing ASG10 indicate that it could be a valuable treatment option for these patients, and I am eager to participate in the trial and learn more about AG10’s potential.”
On March 29, 2018, Eidos reported data on the Phase I trial in healthy volunteers at the 16th International Symposium on Amyloidosis held in Kumamoto, Japan. No serious side effects were observed in that trial, and there were no observed vital sign and cardiac safety issues. Liver, kidney and hematological parameters were within normal limits.
The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the EIDX symbol.