Oct. 26 Quick Takes: Vaxcyte prices year’s second-largest follow-on
Plus AZ’s AKT inhibitor hits co-primary endpoints in breast cancer trial, and updates from Time BioVentures, Seres, Jazz and GSK
Days after its shares rose 60% on news of a pneumococcal vaccine readout, Vaxcyte Inc. (NASDAQ:PCVX) raised $600 million through the sale of 15 million shares, plus warrants to purchase nearly 3.8 million shares, at $32. The price was a 3% discount to Vaxcyte’s closing price of $33 on Monday when it proposed the offering after market hours; Vaxcyte shares rose as high as $42.28 on Wednesday before finishing the day up $5.94 (17%) to $40.80. The biotech’s 24-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine VAX-24 met the primary safety and tolerability objectives in a Phase I/II trial with a profile similar to Prevnar 20 from Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) at all doses studied. The follow-on is the second-largest by a NASDAQ-listed biotech in 2022, trailing only the $862.5 million raise in August by Karuna Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:KRTX).
New results from the Phase III CAPitello-291 study suggest AKT inhibitor capivasertib from AstraZeneca plc (LSE:AZN; NASDAQ:AZN) could receive a broad label if approved by regulators to treat hormone receptor-positive, HER2-low or HER2-negative locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer. The therapy met two co-primary endpoints, significantly improving progression-free survival in both a biomarker-defined subgroup with PIK3CA, AKT1 or PTEN alterations and in the study’s overall population. CAPitello-291 evaluated capivasertib, which AZ believes could be first in class, in 708 patients with progressive disease who had received aromatase inhibitor therapy, with or without a CDK4/6 inhibitor, and up to one line of chemotherapy for advanced disease...