Prevail Therapeutics, a US-based gene therapy developer that counts pharmaceutical firm AbbVie as an investor, will raise $125m when it floats on the Nasdaq Global Market later today.
The offering consists of just over 17.3 million shares priced at $17.00 each, at the midpoint of its $16 to $18 range. It values the company at approximately $577m.
Founded in 2017, Prevail is working on adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based gene therapies intended to treat neurodegenerative diseases by increasing or decreasing the expression of a targeted gene.
The company intends to put up to $60m of the IPO proceeds into a phase 1/2 clinical trial for its lead candidate, PR001, for Parkinson’s disease and a metabolic disorder known as neuronopathic Gaucher disease.
Additional proceeds will go to preclinical studies for a frontotemporal dementia treatment called PR006 and a candidate dubbed PR004, which is being developed to combat a class of neurodegenerative diseases known as synucleinopathies.
Prevail raised $4m in seed capital from unnamed investors in August 2017 according to the IPO filing, adding $75m in a March 2018 series A round featuring Alexandria Venture Investments, part of life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
OrbiMed, RA Capital Management, Pontifax Fund, Adage Capital Management, Omega Funds, BVF Partners, Boxer Capital and EcoR1 Capital also took part in the series A round.
AbbVie subsidiary AbbVie Ventures subsequently joined all the series A investors as well as Surveyor capital for Prevail’s $50m series B round in April 2019.
The company’s largest shareholder is OrbiMed, whose stake is being cut from 48.6% to 38.1%. RegenxBio, an AAV gene therapy technology developer from which Prevail has licensed technology, will have a 7.1% stake, diluted from 9.1%.
Other notable Prevail shareholders include president and CEO Asa Abeliovich (an 8% stake post-IPO), RA Capital (6.3%), Pontifax and Eco1 (4.6% each).
Joint book-running managers Morgan Stanley, BofA Merrill Lynch and Cowen, and lead manager Wedbush PacGrow have the 30-day opportunity to acquire more than 1.1 million additional shares, increasing the size of the offering to almost $144m.
