Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Arcellx, Inc. unveiled its ticker symbol on the Nasdaq Friday, hitting the market at a cool $15 per share.
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Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Arcellx, Inc. unveiled its ticker symbol on the Nasdaq Friday, hitting the market at a cool $15 per share. Arcellx is developing immunotherapies for patients suffering from a plethora of diseases, including cancer, in its aim to revolutionize cell therapy.
As of Friday morning, 8,250,000 shares of common stock have entered the market.The gross proceeds before deductions and other fees were estimated at $123.8 million.
Arcellx specializes in CAR-T therapy, where T-cells are genetically reprogrammed to attack cancer cells. In CAR-T therapy, the patient’s own T-cells are genetically engineered to make the receptors compatible with human cells. Normally, these aggressive types of lymphocytes, essential components of the immune system, ignore human cells. However, this change is necessary so they can effectively target tumors. The therapy has safely concerns limiting its success as a widely used therapy. Although it has been shown to have higher survival rates after a year compared to chemotherapy, complications such as toxicity remain a concern. However, companies like Arcellx are making great strides toward developing a next generation of safer and more effective CAR-T immunotherapies.
Arcellx presented data from a Phase I trial its lead asset, CART-ddBCMA, being developed for the treatment of relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma at the 2021 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in June 2021, and the results look promising. Developed for unresponsive multiple myeloma, the therapy produced responses in 100% of the first 12 evaluable patients, with one participant enjoying a complete response, three achieving a very good partial response and three achieving partial responses.
“CART-ddBCMA continues to induce deep and durable responses in a heavily pretreated patient population with poor prognostic factors, including five patients who have no signs of disease following a single infusion of CART-ddBCMA CAR-T cells,” stated Matthew J. Frigault, M.D., study investigator and assistant director of the Cellular Therapy Service at Mass General Cancer Center and Instructor at Harvard Medical School at the time of the presentation. “These updated clinical results indicate that CART-ddBCMA’s synthetic BCMA binding domain contributes to a therapeutic benefit.” Frigault outlined the next steps as enrolling additional patients and gathering long-term data to affirm the early results.
Coming up behind CART-ddBCMA, Arcellx’s pipeline includes experimental therapies for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), as well as for solid tumors including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC). These are all currently at the discovery and preclinical stages.
The official stock launched with common stocks available exclusively through the company under the ticker symbol “ACLX”. The offering should close on February 8, 2022, upon satisfaction of customary closing conditions. BofA Securities, SVB Leerink, Barclays and William Blair will jointly manage the book-running, and offerings will be made with a prospectus.
