Precision BioSciences Files for $100 Million IPO to Fund Off-the-Shelf CAR-T Trials
Biospace.com | March 04, 2019
Durham, NC-based Precision BioSciences filed on Friday with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission for an initial public offering (IPO). The company, which focuses on gene-edited CAR-T cell therapies for cancer, plans to raise $100 million. Precision’s technology is based on its ARCUS tech platform. ARCUS is a fully synthetic enzyme much like a homing endonuclease. A homing endonuclease is a naturally-occurring DNA-cutting enzyme found in the genomes of many eukaryotic lifeforms. ARCUS is an improvement on nature, with high specificity that can be customized to recognize a DNA sequence inside any target gene. In late-November, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted Precision and Servier’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application for PBCAR0191. This is an allogeneic anti-CD19 CAR-T therapy for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). It is Precision’s first clinical-stage product candidate.