Throwing its hat into a now-cluttered ring, Bind Therapeutics--a biotech company that emerged from the prolific lab of MIT's Robert Langer--has filed plans for an IPO to raise a bit more than $80 million. Bind will now see if its story of experimental programs on promising nanotherapies and a billion-dollar slate of partnerships with marquee pharma names can win over investors who have suddenly become enamored with the high-risk biotech world.
The Cambridge, MA-based biotech's lead drug is BIND-014, now in midstage cancer studies. The midstage study data won't read out until the second half of 2014. The big idea here is to use Bind's nanotechnology to precisely deliver an amped-up dose of docetaxel right to cancer cells and blood vessels that feed a variety of tumors. Bind--helmed by biotech veteran Scott Minick--was co-founded by Harvard's Omid Farokhzad, one of Langer's former graduate students.
Bind's impressive list of collaborators includes Amgen ($AMGN), which signed up for a $180 million deal, Pfizer ($PFE) and AstraZeneca ($AZN). And the company--a 2008 Fierce 15 biotech--has burned its way through $82 million after successfully raising close to $95 million for its development work.
"Aggregate upfront and contingent clinical, regulatory and marketing milestone payments under these agreements are over $1 billion, exclusive of potential royalties," Bind notes in its S-1. "Over $450 million of these potential milestones are pre-commercial, of which approximately $11 million are pre-IND, approximately $190 million are clinical development and approximately $250 million are regulatory milestones. We expect that at least one of our collaborators will advance an Accurin into the clinic by the end of 2014."
Up until the beginning of this year, that kind of assessment would have won some serious respect but little real investor interest, which turned chilly after the 2008 financial crisis. So far this year, though, 29 biotechs have gone public, raising $1.5 billion--including several that sold above range and went on to soar as investors stepped up to gobble up shares.
Credit Suisse and Cowen and Co. are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. Stifel Nicolaus & Co. and JMP Securities LLC are acting as co-managers.
- here's the S-1
Special Report: Bind - 2008 Fierce 15