San Francisco Business Times by Ron Leuty, Reporter
OncoMed Pharmaceuticals Inc. is seeking $115 million in an initial public stock offering, the company said Friday.
The Redwood City-based cancer drug developer, one of the most successful Bay Area biotech companies at raising venture capital over the past five years, said it will use proceeds of the IPO to advance its lead drug -- demcizumab, or OMP-21M18 -- and two other drugs into Phase II clinical trials and for programs with partners GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer AG.
OncoMed, led by CEO Paul Hastings, also will use the money to fund research and drug discover, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The company’s largest shareholders are U.S. Venture Partners, Latterell Venture Parnters and GlaxoSmithKline.
OncoMed is developing monoclonal antibody drugs that target cancer stem cells, a relatively small subpopulation of stem cells in a tumor that drive tumors to grow and spread. The company believes that by stopping these stem cells from renewing themselves, its drugs can stop cancer from recurring.
The company, which has alliances with GlaxoSmith Kline and Bayer AG, has three drugs in clinical development, including one for which it filed an investigational new drug application in April with the Food and Drug Administration. Two other drugs are in preclinical development.
The company would trade on the NASDAQ exchange as “OMED.”
OncoMed lost $15 million last year, and its only revenue has come from collaborations with other companies like Bayer and GSK and grants. Founded in 2004, it had an accumulated deficit of $136.6 million as of March 31, the company said in its SEC filing.
At $115 million, OncoMed’s IPO would be the largest by a Bay Area life sciences company in more than a year and the largest by a drug developer in several years. Gene mapping technology company Pacific Biosciences of California Inc. of Menlo Park raised about $200 million in October 2010 and biofuels company Amyris Biotechnologies Inc. raised $85 million in a September 2010 IPO. But it has been years since a Bay Area drug developer has matched OncoMed’s target.
