Abeona Prices $80 million Secondary, Secures Additional $18.9 million

Rare Daily Staff

Abeona Therapeutics, a developer of gene and cell therapies to treat rare diseases, raised $80 million in a secondary offering of common stock.

Separately, the company said nine foundations had awarded a $13.9 million grant to support development of an experimental gene therapy to treat MPS III, or Sanfilippo syndrome, and that it had raised an additional $5 million through the exercise of outstanding warrants.

The company sold a total of 5 million shares at $16 a share in the secondary offering prior to deducting underwriting fees and offering expenses. The underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 750,000 shares of common stock. The company will use the proceeds for working capital.

The grant from the nine Sanfilippo foundations will be made to Abeona in installments for the advancement of the company’s clinical stage gene therapies for Sanfilippo Syndrome Type A (MPS IIIA) and Sanfilippo Syndrome Type B (MPS IIIB).

Team Sanfilippo Foundation, Stop Sanfilippo Fundación, Fundación Sanfilippo B, Sanfilippo Children’s Foundation, the National MPS Society, the Red Sanfilippo Foundation, the Children’s Medical Research Foundation, Abby Grace Foundation, and Foundation Sanfilippo Suisse collectively collaborated on the grant to Abeona.

“Stop Sanfilippo considers that, based on the very good clinical data recently published by Abeona on the phase 1/2 trial, this is a great opportunity to support a further step on this program making it possible to treat more patients and allowing a broader clinical indication for this potential gene therapy potential treatment,” said Emilio Lopez Alvarez, president of Stop Sanfilippo in Spain.

Additionally, Abeona said it received $5 million through the cash exercise of 625,000 common stock purchase warrants. Each warrant was exercised to purchase one share of common stock at $8 per share. The warrants were issued as part of a $10 million financing completed in May 2015 and would have otherwise been exercisable until November 2017.

October 17, 2017