Vical Raises $20M in Private Stock Placements

Vical (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VICL]]), the San Diego biotech developing a vaccine for the H1N1 swine flu, says it has raised about $20 million in private stock sales arranged with several institutional investors. The overall deal includes a $4.6 million commitment announced today from Special Situations Funds, a New York institutional investor.

The company says it is raising approximately $15.4 million from two other institutional investors, including the Pittsburgh, PA-based Federated Kaufmann Fund, through a related stock-and-options deal. Vical says Federated Kaufmann and Special Situations Funds are among the biotech’s largest stockholders, but the company did not identify its third investor.

Vical says it expects to receive net proceeds of approximately $18.9 million from the total offering after deducting fees and expenses from the deal. The company plans to use proceeds for ongoing programs and other general corporate purposes.

Vical said recently it has completed development of a prototype H1 vaccine, and taken the preliminary steps necessary to begin human clinical trials. Assuming that animal testing is successful, the company says it is ready to advance to large-scale manufacturing of the vaccine for human clinical trials to be conducted by the U.S. Navy. In a statement, Vical CEO Vijay Samant said, “The ongoing H1N1 influenza outbreaks remain a focal point of international discussions regarding the need for and feasibility of producing an H1 vaccine. We have already demonstrated the speed of our technology by producing an H1 vaccine and initiating animal testing while others are still assessing the situation.”

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.