Arvinas Inc (NASDAQ: ARVN) stock surged 19.75% on December 26th, 2018 and corrected over 6.5% on December 27th, 2018 (Source: Google finance). The company has recently presented positive preclinical data on the company’s lead clinical candidate, ARV-471, for advanced or metastatic ER-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer at the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), taking place December 4-8 in San Antonio, Texas (Poster P5-04-18; Session 5: Tumor Cell and Molecular Biology: Endocrine Therapy and Resistance). In this study, orally administered ARV-471 demonstrated improved potency and anti-tumor activity both as a monotherapy and in combination with a CDK4/6 inhibitor, compared to current standard of care treatment regimens.
On the other hand, the company had priced its initial public offering of 7,500,000 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $16.00 per share, for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $120 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses. In addition, Arvinas has granted the underwriters an option for a period of 30 days to purchase up to 1,125,000 additional shares of common stock at the public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions.
Further,the company has raised $55 million through Series C financing. The financing was led by new investor Nextech Invest, with participation from additional new investors Deerfield Management, Hillhouse Capital, and Sirona Capital. All existing investors also participated in this financing round, including Canaan Partners, 5AM Ventures, RA Capital Management, OrbiMed, and New Leaf Venture Partners.
Proceeds from the financing will support the advancement of the Company’s two lead programs toward clinical investigation. The two programs, which target the androgen receptor for castration resistant prostate cancer and the estrogen receptor for ER+ positive breast cancer, both nominated orally available clinical candidates in the fourth quarter of 2017. These proceeds will also advance the Company’s early stage oncology pipeline, CNS pipeline, and efforts on undruggable targets.
The Company’s PROTAC Platform offers potential improvements over traditional small molecule inhibitors by using the cell’s natural and selective ubiquitin proteasome system to degrade disease-causing proteins. By removing target proteins directly rather than simply inhibiting them, PROTACs can provide multiple advantages over small molecule inhibitors which can require high systemic exposure to achieve sufficient inhibition, often resulting in toxic side effects and eventual drug resistance. With multiple protein targets, Arvinas’ PROTAC platform has demonstrated that a transient binding event at a range of binding sites and affinities can translate into very potent degradation of the target protein