Avidity Prices $600 Million Public Offering

Rare Daily Staff

Avidity Biosciences said it priced an upsized $600 million public offering of 15 million shares of its common stock at $40 per share as the developer of antibody oligonucleotide conjugates moved to capitalize on positive results from a study of its experimental exon 44-skipping Duchenne muscular dystrophy therapy. Avidity has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 2,250,000 shares of common stock.

Avidity intends to use the net proceeds from this offering, together with its existing cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, to advance the development of its three late-stage clinical programs, to build appropriate commercial inventory levels to support multiple potential launches, to expand its commercial infrastructure, to progress research and development associated with its platform, and for working capital and general corporate purposes.

Antibody oligonucleotide conjugates are designed to combine the specificity of monoclonal antibodies with the precision of oligonucleotide therapies to address targets and diseases previously unreachable with existing RNA therapies.

Avidity demonstrated the first-ever successful targeted delivery of RNA into muscle and is leading the field with clinical development programs for myotonic dystrophy type 1, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy. Avidity is also advancing two wholly owned precision cardiology development candidates addressing rare genetic cardiomyopathies.

Earlier this week, the company said data from participants treated continuously for one year with its experimental therapy in the phase 1/2 Duchenne muscular dystrophy trial showed, for the first time, that sustained muscle protection leads to meaningful improvements across multiple key functional measures in the condition.

Del-zota is designed to deliver phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomers to skeletal muscle and heart tissue to specifically skip exon 44 of the dystrophin mRNA and enable production of functional, near-full length dystrophin. Near-full length dystrophin retains key functional domains and may offer improved muscle protection for people living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy