RARE Daily

Wave Life Sciences Raises $70 Million to Advance Rare Disease Pipeline

June 15, 2022

Genetic medicines drug developer Wave Life Sciences raised $70 million to advance its experimental pipeline of stereopure oligonucleotide therapeutics to treat severe neurodegenerative diseases.

The company priced an underwritten offering of 25.5 million shares at $2.15 per ordinary share, and, to RA Capital Management in lieu of ordinary shares, pre-funded warrants to purchase up to 7 million ordinary shares at $2.1499 per pre-funded warrant, which represents the per share offering price for the ordinary shares less the $0.0001 per share exercise price for each pre-funded warrant.

The per share offering price for the ordinary shares represents a premium of 7.5 percent over the closing price for Wave Life Sciences’ ordinary shares on June 13, 2022. The pre-funded warrants contain a blocker provision as to the conditions under which they are exercisable. Gross proceeds to Wave Life Sciences from the offering are expected to be approximately $70.0 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and offering expenses.

Wave Life Sciences says its proprietary discovery and drug development platform PRISM enables genetically defined diseases to be targeted with stereopure oligonucleotides across multiple therapeutic modalities, including silencing, splicing, and editing. The company says its stereopure oligonucleotides can increase the potency, efficacy, and safety of standard antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) by taking away the randomness inherent in ASO molecules that have identical sequences but different 3D conformations.

In April, Wave Life Sciences reported positive updates to its ongoing FOCUS-C9 phase 1b/2a study of WVE-004, the company’s clinical candidate for C9orf72-associated amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (C9-ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (C9-FTD). FOCUS-C9 is an adaptive trial that was designed to rapidly optimize dose level and frequency based on early indicators of target engagement. Potent, durable reductions of poly(GP) dipeptide repeat proteins in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) with low, single doses of WVE-004 were observed. Poly(GP) is a key C9-ALS/C9-FTD disease biomarker that, when reduced in CSF, indicates WVE-004’s engagement of target in the brain and spinal cord.

Wave Life Sciences also has ongoing phase 1b/2a studies of candidates targeting Huntington’s disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Author: Rare Daily Staff

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