Intarcia Therapeutics, a US-based biopharmaceutical firm whose name is derived from the Latin for insert, has nearly doubled the equity it has raised over the past 15 years with its latest $160m round.
Intarcia said its combined $160m sale of shares and $50m debt placement was “the largest sum to be raised by a private biotechnology company in at least 25 years”.
Venture capital firms New Enterprise Associates (NEA), New Leaf Venture Partners, Venrock, Alta Partners and Foresite Capital, secondaries firm Omega Funds and hedge funds Baupost Group and Farallon Capital Management invested in the round.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley was sole placement agent for the debt and lead placement agent for the equity, with peer Leerink Swann as co-placement agent on the equity.
Intarcia said the money would be used to develop its lead product candidate ITCA 650, a therapy for the treatment of type two diabetes. Intarcia intends to initiate the global phase three program for ITCA 650 in the first quarter of next year with its financial and strategic partner Quintiles, a biopharmaceutical service provider that has helped develop or commercialize 18 of the 20 best-selling diabetes products and still provides “capital solutions” to some of its clients after spinning off its corporate venturing unit, NovaQuest, in late 2010.
In March 2007, Quilvest Ventures, the family office of the Bemberg family, became a new investor in the consortium providing $50m in Intarcia’s series BB round.
The BB funding followed Intarcia’s pulled flotation attempt over the five years to September 2005.
In its last initial public offering filing, Intarcia had planned to sell five million shares at between $12 and $14 each (with a further 750,000 reserved in case of extra demand). At that time, NEA owned 20.74%, Alta Partners 19.85%, Venrock 16.15%, Granite Global Ventures (GGV) 16.15% and InterWest 6.46%.
Intarcia had raised an aggregate $145.1m between 1997 and November 2004’s series A and E rounds to raise $2m, $12.1m, $38m, $43m, $50m, respectively, at between $1.20 and $36 per share.