Regulus Therapeutics Files for IPO as ‘Emerging Growth’ Company

Regulus Therapeutics, MicroRNA

2007 with technology, capital, and expertise provided by Carlsbad, CA-based Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ISIS]]) and Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ALNY]]). Isis holds a 45.2 percent stake in the company and Alnylam owns just over 44 percent. Regulus says it now has 56 full-time employees, including 23 with Ph.D. degrees.

The company’s says it has raised a total of $106.6 million from its founders, other investors, and through strategic drug-research partnerships with AstroZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and Sanofi. Under these alliances, Regulus says it could receive as much as $1.7 billion in milestone payments for successfully completing development of its microRNA products through 11 drug development programs.

The IPO filing says AstraZeneca also has agreed to buy $25 million worth of Regulus common stock in a concurrent private placement in which the share price will be equal to offering price of the Regulus IPO. Sanofi has indicated it might buy as much as $10 million in Regulus shares in a similar private placement, while Isis and GSK have each indicated an interest in buying as much as $2 million in Regulus shares. These latter deals are non-binding, however, so Sanofi, Isis, and GSK might buy invest less or not at all.

Regulus generated total revenue of nearly $13.8 million in 2011. At the end of June, the company had nearly $27 million in cash and cash equivalents and an accumulated deficit of almost $47.9 million.

The company says it intends to list its shares on the NASDAQ under the symbol RGLS.

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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.