Theratechnologies Inc T.TH

Biotech funding

[qwerty22]

Feel­ing the pain of a bear mar­ket, Macro­Gen­ics plans to start a PhII/III by year's end — once they raise the cash

by Max Gelman

The biotech bear mar­ket has proven chal­leng­ing for com­pa­nies across the sec­tor, with sev­er­al lay­ing off staff or seek­ing merg­ers and sales. And on Tues­day, one pub­lic biotech high­light­ed just how stark its chal­lenges are in rais­ing funds and con­tin­u­ing clin­i­cal stud­ies.

Macro­Gen­ics re­port­ed its first quar­ter earn­ings Tues­day af­ter­noon and not­ed that it cur­rent­ly doesn’t have enough cash to fund a planned Phase II/III study for its lead ex­per­i­men­tal drug in prostate can­cer. Ex­ecs say they’re plan­ning on launch­ing the study by the end of the year and can ob­tain the nec­es­sary fund­ing for the Phase II por­tion by that time.

But as for de­tails on how it would do so, Macro­Gen­ics is re­main­ing tight-lipped.

A press re­lease put out af­ter Tues­day’s clos­ing bell al­lud­ed to “an­tic­i­pat­ed and po­ten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tion pay­ments” that could al­low the com­pa­ny to “rea­son­ably ob­tain fund­ing” for the Phase II co­hort. Oth­er op­tions in­clud­ed on­ly a vague men­tion of “a com­bi­na­tion of ex­ist­ing fi­nan­cial re­sources, a va­ri­ety of ex­ter­nal fund­ing or po­ten­tial rev­enue sources,” and the dread­ed “pipeline pri­or­i­ti­za­tion.”

Macro­Gen­ics ap­peared to inch to­ward the lat­ter path Tues­day, drop­ping triple neg­a­tive breast can­cer as a planned in­di­ca­tion for the drug.

On the com­pa­ny’s earn­ings call Tues­day af­ter­noon, ex­ecs did not tip their hands any fur­ther. When asked by SVB Se­cu­ri­ties’ Jonathan Chang for more de­tails, Macro­Gen­ics CEO Scott Koenig on­ly re­it­er­at­ed that the com­pa­ny ex­pects to find the mon­ey some­how and isn’t pro­vid­ing a time­line for when the study might be com­plete