Fresh off its latest R&D partnership, Dutch antibody specialist arGEN-X is planning to go public in Brussels, looking to raise cash and advance its proprietary pipeline.
The biotech isn't specifying how many shares it plans to offer or at what price, saying only that it hopes to trade on the Euronext market in its second home of Belgium, where it operates an R&D facility.
Since its foundation in 2008, arGEN-X has largely made its name as an antibody-developing partner to larger drugmakers, landing development deals with Shire ($SHPG), Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim and Sino-American biotech RuiYi. Those agreements could bring in as much as €1.3 billion ($1.8 billion) in the long run, arGEN-X says, but the company is looking to move the spotlight to a stable of treatments all its own, and the planned IPO would help move the needle on three pipeline therapies.
Leading the way is ARGX-110, discovered using arGEN-X's in-house Simple Antibody system. The treatment targets the CD70 immune checkpoint to block tumor growth and galvanize a patient's immune system, and the company is working through a European Phase Ib study testing it out in blood cancers and solid tumors. The biotech's latest partnership, a $4.5 million joint effort with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society announced Tuesday, will study ARGX-110 in a Phase II trial on the rare lymphoma Waldenström's macroglobulinemia.
Behind that is ARGX-111, which targets the metastasis-related receptor c-Met, also in Phase Ib study for hematological and solid tumors, and the antibody fragment ARGX-113, a preclinical treatment for severe autoimmune diseases.
The big idea at arGEN-X is to use its own cash and know-how to develop its pipeline for rare and orphan indications, generating positive data that will attract partners willing to take on larger treatment populations, CEO Tim Van Hauwermeiren said.
"We need to stay realistic and see what is manageable as a standalone biotech company," Van Hauwermeiren told FierceBiotech.
And arGEN-X has a machine in place to keep its pipeline fresh thanks to the Simple Antibody discovery system, he said. The core technology is based on the immune system of llamas, a platform arGEN-X says beats out traditional transgenic mouse models in churning out antibodies that match variable genes in humans. Under its latest deal with Shire, announced this month, the larger drugmaker gets first go at any and all programs the pair discovers, but arGEN-X has the right to license anything its partner doesn't want.
"I'm not saying that'll be true for each and every product, but it creates a nice upside potential along our strategy of building a product pipeline," Van Hauwermeiren said.
Meanwhile, the roiling U.S. market that has helped scores of biotech go public over the last year has spurred some complementary optimism in Europe. The U.K.'s Circassia grabbed headlines last quarter when it pulled off a $332 million London debut, while smaller outfits like France's TxCell, Oncodesign and Genomic Vision have made their way onto Euronext.
Despite the recent volatility of the global biotech IPO market, Van Hauwermeiren believes there will always be a place for platform-based companies with built-in product engines.
"This is not an IPO out of necessity," he said. "This is an IPO out of opportunity."
- read arGEN-X's release (PDF)