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Boston, MA - November 14, 2005
CombinatoRx Completes IPO
Boston Millennia Partners is pleased to announce the completion of an Initial Public Offering for portfolio company CombinatoRx. CombinatoRx sold approximately 6 million shares at $7.00 per share. The first day of trading closed up 12% at $7.85 per share.
“We congratulate the CombinatoRx team on achieving this important milestone,” stated Patrick Fortune, Partner of Boston Millennia Partners. “The IPO supports our view that CombinatoRx will quickly develop into a major biopharmaceutical company. The capital raised in the IPO will allow CombinatoRx to continue to aggressively expand its preclinical and clinical product development programs. We are pleased to add CombinatoRx to the list of companies we have assisted in bringing public which includes major life science companies such as Parexel and Ilex Oncology.”
CombinatoRx is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing new medicines built from synergistic combinations of approved drugs. In less than five years, the company has discovered and advanced into clinical trials a portfolio of seven product candidates targeting multiple immuno-inflammatory diseases and cancer, at a total investment, including development of its proprietary screening technology, of less than $50 million.
CombinatoRx is developing its combination drugs in response to the understanding that many diseases affect the body through multiple biological pathways. The activity of a therapeutic compound against one pathway can be insufficiently effective because biological systems often compensate by using a secondary pathway. Traditional drug discovery has focused on agents that target a single biological pathway. CombinatoRx believes that by targeting multiple pathways, its combination drug candidates may create synergistic therapeutic effects, which could result in improved treatments for many diseases.
In October 2005, CombinatoRx entered into a research and license agreement with Angiotech Pharmaceuticals under which CombinatoRx agreed to provide access to its clinical and preclinical portfolio of product candidates and its Chalice database of drug combinations, and to undertake a joint research project with Angiotech to discover, and for Angiotech to develop, product candidates for use in medical devices and interventional medicine products. The company has granted Angiotech an exclusive, milestone and royalty-bearing license in its field for the product candidates Angiotech selects from CombinatoRx’s portfolio of clinical and preclinical product candidates, its Chalice database and the joint research project. Under the agreement, CombinatoRx received a $27 million up-front license fee and Angiotech made a $15 million equity investment in CombinatoRx. Also under the agreement, Angiotech may select up to 10 compounds for development in its field from CombinatoRx’s portfolio of clinical and preclinical product candidates, and may select up to five additional compounds to develop upon the payment of $2 million per compound. For each of the compounds selected by Angiotech for development, CombinatoRx may receive up to $30 million in milestone payments if certain development and regulatory approval milestones are met, as well as royalties on any future product sales incorporating the compounds. In addition, CombinatoRx may also receive $7 million from Angiotech if Angiotech elects to extend the research project beyond 30 months to a total term of five years.
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