Bone Therapeutics – a Walloon cell therapy company specialized in bone fracture repair and prevention – shifts up a gear and raises 32.2 million euro in a 2.5 times oversubscribed successful IPO on Brussels and Paris Euronext stock exchanges. Bone Therapeutics wants to become a champion in bone regenerative medicine.
Addressing areas of high unmet medical needs in bone repair
The company is focusing on various applications in the fields of bone fracture repair and prevention, from fractures with impaired healing to spinal fusion, osteonecrosis and osteoporosis. Enrico Bastianelli, CEO of Bone Therapeutics is confident regarding the prospects that Bone’s future treatments will offer: “The current standard of care in these fields involves major surgeries and long recovery periods. Our approach, which is using osteoblastic/bone-forming cells and which is administrable via a minimally invasive percutaneous technique, is a unique proposition in the market”, he says.
The right time for an IPO
“We have decided to launch an IPO because it was the right time for us to do so. We benefit from a favorable IPO market in France and in Belgium, the stock index keeps on growing for biotechs and we wanted to increase our visibility. Bone Therapeutics is now technologically mature and is able to continuously communicate about its results, which is a major requirement for a listed company. This fundraising should allow us to finance, within the four coming years, the development of five bone cell therapy treatments (of which two are in pivotal Phase III and three in Phase II) but also to launch clinical trials in the US and to find a partner there”, explains Enrico Bastianelli, CEO of Bone Therapeutics.
Products will target one-third of the global market
According to the Orthopaedic Industry Annual Report for 2013, the relevant fracture repair and fracture prevention markets (including the osteoporosis market) represent a global market of around 34 billion dollar and 42 million dollar patients. “Bone Therapeutics’ products target about a third of these markets, representing approximately 12 million patients in Europe, the US and Japan, with limited competition”, Bastianelli declares.
Our objective is to become, within a decade, a champion of bone regenerative medicine in Wallonia but also a multinational company with activities in the US and Japan. Our ambition is to write, thanks to our products, a new industrial success story.
Opening of a new Walloon Cell Therapy Platform
A new production platform will open its doors in April 2015 in Gosselies (Belgium). Bone Therapeutics and Promethera BioSciences (a company specialized in the treatment of liver diseases) will be the first two companies to use this unique infrastructure. The new facilities – where Bone Therapeutics’ administrative and R&D teams will work from then on and where its production will move mid-2016 – will comprise almost 2000m2 of state-of-the-art clean rooms for production and 1,300m2 for research and quality control. This Walloon Cell Therapy Platform (which represents a public-private investment of 20 million euro) is also expecting to create roughly one hundred direct jobs and an additional two hundred indirect jobs through outsourcing over the next two years.
Innovative prospects through 3D bioprinting
The company is willing to expand its product portfolio and has started a new project called “MXB Bioprinting”. Bone Therapeutics will combine its allogeneic1 bone-forming (osteoblastic) cells within a 3-D bioprinted scaffold to treat large bone defects resulting from trauma, bone disease or surgical procedures such as bone metastasis resection. The cell-matrix scaffold will be tailored to the size and form of the bone defect and will be designed to mimic the natural bone in terms of shape, structure and biomechanical properties. Once implanted, the 3-D patient-tailored matrix is intended to be progressively replaced by natural bone tissue, produced by the off-the-shelf osteoblastic cells as well as by the ones from the patient. This innovative approach is aimed to offer a compelling alternative to bone autograft, the current standard-of-care for large bone defects, which is associated with significant morbidities.
Please note that the final offer price was set at EUR16.00 per share, giving the Company an initial market capitalization of 104.8 million euro. Bone Therapeutics will issue 2.012.500 new shares, including the fully exercised increase option (262.500 shares). The gross proceeds for the Company amount to 32.2 million euro. Additionally, an overallotment option to subscribe to up to 301.875 additional shares amounting to 4.8 million euro at the final offer price has been granted to the joint bookrunners, for the sole purpose to cover over-allotments, if any. Any exercise of the over-allotment option will be announced within five banking days after such exercise. Bone Therapeutics will be listed on Euronext Brussels and Euronext Paris and trading is expected to commence as of 6 February, under the ticker symbol BOTHE.
(Source: BioWin, Image courtesy of stockdevil at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
