Lpath Looks to Raise $10 Million Through Secondary Offering

San Diego’s Lpath (OTC: [[ticker:LPTN]]), a biotech developing specialized monoclonal antibodies for cancer and other diseases, intends to raise about $10 million through a secondary offering of stock and warrants, according to a recent regulatory filing.

The company is working to advance two related drug candidates within an emerging field of medical science that targets bioactive signaling lipids, and could be used to treat a wide range of human diseases. One is a specialized formulation of the humanized monoclonal antibody sonepcizumab, which has shown promise in treating the wet form of age-related macular degeneration and other types of eye disease. The other drug candidate is a systemic formulation of sonepcizumab that Lpath was developing with Merck Serono as a potential late-stage cancer therapeutic. A third related drug candidate is in pre-clinical development.

Lpath and Merck ended their partnership in mid-2010, and Lpath says Merck has relinquished all rights to the drug. The biotech began working with Pfizer on the compound for diseases of the eye in early 2010, and Lpath later granted Pfizer a time-limited right of first refusal for its cancer drug candidate.

Lpath says it has financed its operations mostly through the private placement of equity and debt securities, and funding from corporate partners pursuant to research and development collaboration agreements. The company says it intends to use the net proceeds of the $10 million offering for general corporate purposes.

At the end of September, Lpath had an accumulated deficit of just over $36 million. The company says its costs for continuing research and development, including general operations, should be about $20 million to $30 million through the end of next year.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.