Sophiris Bio Files $75M IPO, Plans Pivotal Trials of Prostate Drug

Sophiris Bio, Enlarged Prostate, Benign Prostate Hyperplasia, BPH

San Diego-based Sophiris Bio, which was founded in Vancouver B.C. and already trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, intends to list its shares on the Nasdaq and raise almost $75 million through an IPO, according to a regulatory filing. The life sciences startup has been developing a new drug treatment for benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH), or enlarged prostate.

The IPO is part of a long-term plan that brought the Canadian startup to San Diego in 2011. Sofinnova executive partner Lars Ekman, who headed the Sophiris relocation effort, laid out the plan last year, shortly before Sophiris named the veteran life sciences executive Randy Woods as CEO. Warburg Pincus, which provided funding needed to re-capitalize the company, now holds a 52.3 percent stake in Sophiris. BC Advantage Funds has an 11.5 percent stake.

The company’s fate is closely tied to the development of its lead drug candidate, PRX302, a genetically modified recombinant protein. Sophiris says it expects to begin enrolling patients for the first of two planned pivotal trials in the first half of this year.

The drug is intended as an improved treatment for BPH, and has been shown to shrink an enlarged prostate without the type of drug-related erectile dysfunction or cardiovascular side effects that occur with existing pharmaceutical therapies. Sophiris says its drug also would be safer and less invasive than prostate surgery. The estimated market for BPH-related medical services in U.S. hospitals and outpatient settings is more than $1 billion.

Sophiris says its drug is being developed for delivery as an ultrasound-guided injection directly into the prostate. The drug is activated only by the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA), which is found only on the surface of prostate cells and nowhere else in the body, triggering a process of programmed cell death that causes prostate tissue to shrink without damage to neighboring tissue and nerves.

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.