Carbylan Therapeutics, Inc.

December 31, 2014 By Riley McDermid , BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor Gene therapy startup Spark Therapeutics isn’t wasting any time going public, after the barely year-old company said Wednesday that is has filed an S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $86 million for an initial public offering. The market has recently fawned over IPO issues from peer companies Juno Therapeutics and Bellicum and Spark is apparently ready to cash in on the action. J.P. Morgan Securities and Credit Suisse Securities will act as lead book-running managers for the offering. Cowen and Company will act as lead manager and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. will act as co-manager. This week has seen boom times for biotech IPOs, with at least four filing S-1s since Monday, including TRACON Pharmaceuticals and Carbylan Therapeutics yesterday filing for $57.5 million and $86 million IPOs respectively. Spark , which is a late clinical-stage gene therapy company seeking to develop one-time, life-altering treatments for debilitating genetic diseases, has recently found a lot of interest from investors for its lead drug candidate. Dubbed SPK-RPE65, the drug treats a rare blinding disease, and has already received both breakthrough therapy and orphan product designation, with a fully-enrolled pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial ongoing. Spark also has a pipeline full of promising gene therapy candidates in development for the treatment of additional blinding conditions, hematologic disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. The company’s primary backer so far has been the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) which has poured $73 million into it, and it inked a $280 million partnership with Pfizer Inc. , which includes help developing PK-FIX, its promising hemophilia B therapy. CHOP currently calls the shots at Spark , with a 53 percent stake in the company. It has raised $122.8 Million in two rounds from seven investors. The most recent funding round for Spark brought in $72.8 million in May, with Sofinnova fronting $15 million, and T. Rowe Price , Deerfield , Wellington Management , Rock Springs Capital , Brookside Capital making up the difference. Elliott Sigal , a board member and partner at New Enterprise Associates , also put up $250,000. Any large IPO offering could be a boon for CEO Spark Jeffrey Marrazzo , who could see a major payday, perhaps joining fellow Juno chief executive Hans Bishop , who just hit the jackpot with a $100 million payout the day it went public last week .

December 30, 2014 By Riley McDermid , BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor Osteoarthirtis pain management startup Carbylan Therapeutics has filed plans with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a sizable initial public offering, saying in a filing this week that it hopes to raise up to $86 million to go public. The company said in its filing it plans to list on the NASDAQ under the symbol CBYL , but did not disclose pricing terms or amount of publish shares available. Carbylan initially filed confidentially on Sept. 19 but is apparently publicizing the news now in an attempt to gin up interest in what could be a mid-winter IPO. Leerink Partners is the sole bookrunner on the deal. Its primary candidate right now is an injectable treatment for osteoarthritis pain, a market estimated by analysts to be worth $4.4 billion in 2011, with a projected growth rate of 3.7 percent annually, to $6 billion in 2019. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Carbylan was founded in 2005 to develop and market medical devices and device/drug combination products based on chemically engineered polymers of hyaluronic acid, a well known polysaccharide widely present in the human body. It has said its initial market focus is therapeutic medical devices and combination products to treat the pain associated with osteoarthritis. Carbylan biopolymers are biocompatible, non-immunogenic and, when combined with pharmaceutical agents, and are designed to enable “unique, controlled, local drug delivery with sustained therapeutic benefit,” said the company. So far the startup has raised $31 million in three rounds of financing, including a $5 million debt financing in October. It had a $6 million Series C round and $20 million Series B round from InterWest Partners , Vivo Ventures and Alta Partners , its three primary backers. OA is a chronic joint disease with associated pain and is estimated by the National Institutes of Health to be the leading cause of chronic disability in the U.S. A report released by research firm GlobalData three years ago found that while “current competition in the OA pain market is strong,” with drug classes such as Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs), simple analgesics, corticosteroids and opioids, “providing effective relief for discomfort in the early-to-mid stages of OA pain…these options fail to provide adequate pain relief in the late stages of OA when there is further degradation of the cartilage.”