Adverum Commences $200 Million Public Offering on Heels of Positive Interim Data from Wet AMD Gene Therapy Trial

Rare Daily Staff

Adverum Biotechnologies said it has commenced an underwritten public offering of $200 million of its common stock with underwriters granted a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 15 percent of the shares of its common stock offered in the public offering.

Adverum is a clinical-stage gene therapy company focused on ocular and rare diseases. The public offering comes after the company reported positive interim data from all four cohorts from its OPTIC phase 1 trial of ADVM-022 intravitreal gene therapy gene therapy in treatment-experienced patients with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Age-related macular degeneration is characterized by progressive destruction of the macula, located in the retina, which leads to the loss of central vision. Symptoms usually appear in a person’s sixties or seventies and worsen over time. There are two forms of AMD, dry and wet, with the dry form accounting for up to 90 percent of cases. Wet AMD is rare and is the severest form of the disease.

Current treatment options include monthly injections to slow the progression of the disease. Adverum hopes that a one-time gene therapy could offer patients a better alternative.

Data from the dose-ranging trial, which recently completed enrollment, showed that the gene therapy was well tolerated, had continued robust treatment response from both high and low doses, and long-term durability beyond 15 months from a single injection with no rescue injections in the high dose cohort and five rescue injections out of 15 patients in the low dose cohort.

“ADVM-022, a novel gene therapy providing continuous delivery of aflibercept, has the potential to be a ‘one and done’ IVT injection that would dramatically reduce the treatment burden for the millions of patients with wet AMD and diabetic macular edema (DME) worldwide,” said Laurent Fischer, CEO of Adverum. “As we continue to see positive data from ongoing trials, we are preparing to accelerate our development and future commercial launch plans for ADVM-022.”

Adverum said it planned to start pivotal trial in wet AMD mid-2021.