Humanigen Announces $71,800,000 Equity Financing
- J.P. Morgan Securities LLC acting as placement agent
- Financing syndicate includes Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company), HealthCor, Valiant Capital Partners, First Light Asset Management and Ghost Tree Capital
BURLINGAME, CA / ACCESSWIRE / June 2, 2020 / Humanigen, Inc., (OTCQB:HGEN) (“Humanigen”), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on preventing and treating cytokine storm with lenzilumab, the company’s proprietary Humaneered® anti-human granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) monoclonal antibody, announced today the pricing of a private placement of approximately $72 million of common stock.
J.P. Morgan Securities LLC is acting as the placement agent for the financing, which comprises a group of healthcare investors including Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company), HealthCor, Valiant Capital Partners, First Light Asset Management and Ghost Tree Capital. Polsinelli PC is serving as the company’s legal advisor.
Net proceeds from the financing will be used to fund development of the company’s monoclonal antibody portfolio and for general corporate purposes, including the pivotal Phase III trial of lenzilumab for the prevention and treatment of cytokine storm in COVID-19 pneumonia and the development of Humanigen’s pipeline, including ZUMA-19, the CAR-T study involving lenzilumab being conducted in collaboration with Kite Pharma/Gilead Sciences.
Dr. Cameron Durrant, chief executive officer of Humanigen, stated, “We are pleased to announce this financing that incorporates some of the most respected and knowledgeable specialized healthcare investors in the world. We appreciate our new investors’ validation of Humanigen’s approach to GM-CSF pathway science and its potential impact in COVID-19 patients, as well as other conditions with high unmet medical need. With the support of our existing and new investors, we are also planning to list our common stock on a national securities exchange in the coming months.”
The securities that will be sold in the private placement have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), or any state or other applicable jurisdiction’s securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable state or other jurisdictions’ securities laws. Humanigen has agreed to file a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) registering the resale of the shares of common stock that will be issued in the private placement.
This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any offer, solicitation or sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. Any offering of the securities under the resale registration statement will only be made by means of a prospectus.
About COVID-19
COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. COVID-19 has become a global pandemic, with almost 6.5 million confirmed cases and almost 400,000 deaths reported to date. Patients with severe cases of COVID-19 experience severe viral pneumonia that can progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), respiratory failure and death.
About Humanigen, Inc.
Humanigen, Inc. is developing its portfolio of clinical and pre-clinical therapies for the treatment of cancers and infectious diseases via its novel, cutting-edge GM-CSF neutralization and gene-knockout platforms. We believe that our GM-CSF neutralization and gene-editing platform technologies have the potential to reduce the inflammatory cascade associated with coronavirus infection as well as the serious and potentially life-threatening CAR-T therapy-related side effects while preserving and potentially improving the efficacy of the CAR-T therapy itself, thereby breaking the efficacy/toxicity linkage. The company’s immediate focus is to prevent or minimize the cytokine storm that precedes severe lung dysfunction and ARDS in serious cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection and also in combining FDA-approved and development stage CAR-T therapies with lenzilumab, the company’s proprietary Humaneered® anti-human-GM-CSF immunotherapy, which is its lead product candidate. A clinical collaboration with Kite, a Gilead Company, to evaluate the sequential use of lenzilumab with Yescarta®, axicabtagene ciloleucel, in a multicenter clinical trial in adults with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma is currently enrolling. The company is also focused on creating next-generation combinatory gene-edited CAR-T therapies using strategies to improve efficacy while employing GM-CSF gene knockout technologies to control toxicity. In addition, the company is developing its own portfolio of proprietary first-in-class EphA3-CAR-T for various solid cancers and EMR1-CAR-T for various eosinophilic disorders. The company is also exploring the effectiveness of its GM-CSF neutralization technologies (either through the use of lenzilumab as a neutralizing antibody or through GM-CSF gene knockout) in combination with other CAR-T, bispecific or natural killer (NK) T cell engaging immunotherapy treatments to break the efficacy/toxicity linkage, including to prevent and/or treat graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) in patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). For more information, visit www.humanigen.com
More details on COVID-19 can be found under the COVID-19 tab on our website.
Forward-Looking Statements
This release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements reflect management’s current knowledge, assumptions, judgment and expectations regarding future performance or events. Although management believes that the expectations reflected in such statements are reasonable, they give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct and you should be aware that actual events or results may differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Words such as “will,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “potential,” “possible,” “goals,” “accelerate,” “continue,” and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding our expectations for receipt of net proceeds at closing, expected on June 2, 2020, the the Phase III study, the potential future development of lenzilumab to minimize or reduce the severity of lung dysfunction associated with severe COVID-19 infections or to be approved by FDA for such use or to help CAR-T reach its full potential or to deliver benefit in preventing GvHD, the use of proceeds from the financing, and the anticipated filing of a registration statement relating to potential resales of securities issued at closing of the private placement. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, competition in the development of COVID-19 therapies and the greater resources possessed by many competing firms; our dependence on partners to further the development of our product candidates; the uncertainties inherent in the development and launch of any new pharmaceutical product; the outcome of pending or future litigation; and the various risks and uncertainties described in the “Risk Factors” sections and elsewhere in the Company’s periodic and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary notice. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements made in this press release to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law.
CONTACT:
Investors and media:
ir@humanigen.com
SOURCE: Humanigen, Inc.
View source version on accesswire.com:
https://www.accesswire.com/592417/Humanigen-Announces-71800000-Equity-Financing
