NEW YORK – Candel Therapeutics on Thursday priced a public offering of common stock and pre-funded warrants that is expected to bring in $80 million in gross proceeds.
The Needham, Massachusetts-based drugmaker is selling 10,000,001 shares of its common stock at $6.00 per share and is also offering pre-funded warrants to buy up to 3,333,333 shares of common stock at $5.99 per pre-funded warrant.
Candel has also granted underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 2 million additional common shares. Citigroup, BofA Securities, and Canaccord Genuity are the bookrunning managers for the offering. H.C. Wainwright & Co. is acting as the lead manager for the offering.
Candel said that it plans to use the proceeds from the offering to further advance its pipeline candidates, including CAN-2409, which it is developing for certain patients with non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and prostate cancer.
The agent is an off-the-shelf replication-defective adenovirus that Candel has designed to deliver the HSV-thymidine kinase gene to patients' tumors, in turn generating an immune response against the disease. The firm plans to submit a biologics licensing application to the US Food and Drug Administration in prostate cancer supported by the proceeds from the stock offering. Candel also plans to use the funds for general corporate purposes.
Separate from CAN-2409, Cadel is also evaluating CAN-3110 in a Phase Ib clinical trial for patients with recurrent high-grade glioma.
The offering comes after Candel laid off half of its workforce last year in an effort to focus exclusively on CAN-2409 and CAN-3110 as well as its enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform, which it uses to create the HSV-based gene constructs that modulate the tumor microenvironment. The workforce reduction was expected to fund the company into Q4 2024.
Candel expects its public offering to close on or around Dec. 16.