Israeli urological cancer treatment developer UroGen Pharma (formerly TheraCoat) filed on Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to raise up to $50 million in an IPO on Nasdaq. The company's value has not yet been disclosed. The Ra'anana-based company, which filed confidentially last month, plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol URGN. Jefferies and Cowen & Company are the joint bookrunners on the deal.
Founded in 2004, at the Granot Ventures incubator by Prof. Asher Holzer, a co-founder of InspireMD, TheraCoat, as it was known, initially developed a unique platform technology to improve drug delivery into internal cavities including the bladder. Today it is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing novel therapies designed to change the standard of care for urological pathologies with a focus on uro-oncology.
The lead drug candidates, MitoGel and VesiGel, are designed to potentially remove tumors by non-surgical means, to treat several forms of non-muscle invasive urothelial cancer, including low-grade bladder cancer and low-grade upper tract urothelial carcinoma, or UTUC. UroGen is also developing an additional clinical-stage drug candidate, Vesimune, for the treatment of high-grade non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. The company has recently licensed BotuGel for the treatment of overactive bladder and interstitial cystitis, to Allergan for further development.
The Israeli company will hold its IPO, headed by two figures already well known on Wall Street. UroGen's CEO is Ron Bentsur, former CEO of NASDAQ-traded XTL and Keryx while its chairman is urologist Prof. Arie Belldegrun, who founded Kite Pharma, traded on Nasdaq at a company value of $4.3 billion. .
Mori Arkin's Arkin Holdings (21%) is the biggest shareholder. Other shareholders include Pontifax fund (16.7%), US life science fund ProQuest Investments (10.2%), Swiss oncological pharma developer Telormedix (8.4%) and Australian investment company Tatham Investments (5.1%). Chaim Hurvitz's CHealth was one of the first investors in the company.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 9, 2017
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