New England-area drugmakers revealed partnership deals, stock offerings, and drug development progress this week.
—Cambridge, MA-based Infinity Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:INFI]]) announced it had priced a 5.3-million-share offering of its common stock at $14.50 per share, which adds up to a preliminary total of $76.9 million. The offering, for which Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan Securities are acting as joint book-running managers, is expected to close on August 14. Infinity will use the proceeds for R&D, capital, potential acquisitions, and other corporate purposes. The company also said its partnerships with Purdue Pharma and Mundipharma have been restructured, which prompted it to cut 20 percent of its workforce. That leaves about 160 employees at the company, according to a report in FierceBiotech.
—Galenea announced the expansion of a previous partnership it had inked with the CHDI Foundation around the study of Huntington’s disease, using its technology for identifying molecules that may impact the communication between neurons. Financial deals of the expanded deal weren’t disclosed, but just last month, Cambridge-based Galenea inked another deal with the Japanese drugmaker Eisai to develop treaments for neurodegenerative diseases.
—Watertown, MA-based Dicerna Pharmaceuticals reached an in-vivo milestone in the development of its second oncology drug candidate as part of a partnership with Kyowa Hakko Kirin, which paid Dicerna an undisclosed milestone payment. The two companies have a research and drug development collaboration using Dicerna’s RNA interference technology.
—And my colleague Arlene took a look at the progress that Cambridge-based Aegerion Pharmaceuticals has been making in the two years since it was $4 million in debt and nearly insolvent.
