Puma Biotechnology aims to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange as the Los Angeles-based company, which now trades over the counter, advances a drug licensed from Pfizer ($PFE) to late-stage development for women with HER2-positive breast cancer, according to an SEC filing Friday.
Puma pounced last year on an in-licensing deal with drug giant Pfizer for PB272 (neratinib), which the company plans to advance later this year or early next year to a Phase III study in patients with breast cancer that overexpresses human epidermal growth receptor type 2 (HER2) and who have taken previous HER2 therapy. The company believes that the experimental drug could provide advantages because it inhibits a different site on the receptor than Roche's HER2 drugs Herceptin and Perjeta as well as GlaxoSmithKline's ($GSK) Tykerb.
Puma CEO Alan Auerbach propelled himself up the ranks of biotech executives in the sale of his previous company, Cougar Biotechnology, to Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) in 2009 for a whopping $1 billion, which bought the New Brunswick, NJ-based healthcare giant its hit prostate cancer drug Zytiga. Obviously, Auerbach has chosen a different name for the same species of cat for his latest company, and he's chosen to take on another program that could address gaps in the treatment of cancer. Puma aims to build a body of evidence for neratinib as a weapon against a variety of aggressive cancers including certain lung tumors that overexpress HER2, according to the company.
Last year, the company raised $55 million in a private placement and began operations in October to advance the drug licensed from Pfizer, pulling in funding from lead investor Adage Capital Partners as well as Brookside Capital, H&Q Healthcare Investors, H&Q Life Science Investors, Jennison Associates, Orbimed and T. Rowe Price Associates-managed funds. The company expects that its shares will trade on the NYSE under the symbol "PBYI."
- here's the SEC filing