Albireo Prices $160 Million Public Offering to Advance Rare Liver Disease Drug

Rare Daily Staff

One day after reporting positive results for its experimental therapy odevixibat in a late-stage trial of patients with a rare liver disease, Albireo Pharma priced an underwritten public offering of 4 million shares of its common stock at $40.00 per share.

Albireo expects to garner $160 million in gross proceeds from the offering before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and offering expenses. The company has also granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 600,000 shares at the public offering price. The offering is expected to close on September 14.

Albireo Pharma is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel bile acid modulators to treat orphan pediatric liver diseases, and other liver and gastrointestinal diseases and disorders. Albireo’s lead product candidate, odevixibat, is being developed to treat rare pediatric cholestatic liver diseases and is in phase 3 development in progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis (PFIC) and biliary atresia, with a third phase 3 trial being planned in Alagille syndrome.

Odevixibat is a highly potent, non-systemic ileal bile acid transport inhibitor (IBATi), that has minimal systemic exposure and acts locally in the small intestine. On September 8, the company reported that odevixibat met its two primary endpoints in a late stage study of patients with PFIC, a rare genetic disorder that causes a build-up of bile in liver cells leading to progressive, life threatening liver disease. The most prominent and problematic ongoing manifestation of the disease is pruritus, or intense itching, which often results in a severely diminished quality of life. Currently there are no approved drugs to treat PFIC.