Maryland biotech Sensei Biotherapeutics Inc. has officially moved to the public arena.
The Rockville immunotherapy company, which develops cancer therapeutics, made its debut on the Nasdaq Global Market Feb. 4 poised to secure $133 million in proceeds from its initial public offering. That’s after increasing its inaugural share price to $19 for more than 7 million shares of common stock.
The IPO was scheduled to close Monday, subject to satisfying customary closing conditions.
The company first filed in mid-January to raise a maximum $100 million in its IPO and later reported an expectation to secure up to $122 million.
Sensei Bio (NASDAQ: SNSE) opened its first day on the exchange trading at $24.70 per share, then on Day 2 dipped to a low of $19.25 — still higher than its IPO share price. Monday, its third day live on the Nasdaq, the stock was up 3.6% at $23.30 per share by early afternoon.
The company said in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it plans to use between $30 million and $40 million of the net proceeds to fund development of its lead product candidate, SNS-301, which is now in a phase 1/2 clinical trial for squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. That study is expected to produce top-line data by the end of 2021.
The business also plans to put roughly $15 million to $20 million toward preclinical and clinical development of SNS-401 for an aggressive skin cancer called Merkel cell carcinoma, and approximately $10 million to $15 million to develop SNS-VISTA for solid tumors, it said. The rest is reserved for the development of Sensei’s ImmunoPhage vaccine platform — which uses bacteriophage, a type of virus that infects bacteria, to provoke an immune response in the body — as well as other pipeline programs, working capital and other general corporate purposes, the company said.
Still, Sensei “will need to raise additional capital to complete the development and commercialization” for its programs, the company wrote in its SEC filings.
The business reported a net loss of $15 million for the first three quarters of 2020, after a net loss of $16.7 million in 2019, according to its filings. Without a product yet to market, Sensei ended September with $3.7 million in cash and later received $41.4 million in proceeds from stock sales. The business also opened 2021 with a $30 million funding round led by Apeiron Investment Group and Catalio Capital Management alongside other investors.
Sensei counted 25 employees at the end of September and previously said in its filings it expects to hire more as it transforms into a public company. President and CEO John Celebi joined the company in spring 2018 after holding positions with Boston's X4 Pharmaceuticals, Burlingame, California-based Igenica Biotherapeutics and ArQule of Woburn, Massachusetts.
Sensei Bio was born in 1999 as Panacea Pharmaceuticals Inc. and rebranded in December 2017. The original business garnered attention in 2007 for its ability to diagnose lung cancer, before a period of turbulence marked by layoffs and departures, cuts to its physical footprint and a lawsuit alleging unpaid wages. The company went silent for years but reappeared in late 2015.
Sensei was among a few biotech companies to hit the market for the first time Feb. 4, including Seattle’s Sana Biotechnology Inc. (NASDAQ: SANA) and Blacksburg, Virginia-based Landos Biopharma Inc. (NASDAQ: LABP). It's also one of several players that gives Montgomery County hope that it can continue the momentum built up by its life sciences sector during the coronavirus pandemic, and as other biotech players along the I-270 corridor expand.
Sensei follows several of Greater Washington counterparts into the publicly traded space in the past two years, including Silver Spring’s Aziyo Biologics (NASDAQ: AZYO), Beltsville’s NextCure (NASDAQ: NXTC), Reston’s SOC Telemed (NASDAQ: TLMD) and more. That list also includes Montgomery County neighbor Viela Bio (NASDAQ: VIE), which recently reached a deal to be acquired by Dublin’s Horizon Therapeutics (NASDAQ: HZNP) for $3.1 billion. Next up? Gaithersburg immunotherapy company NexImmune Inc., which filed for IPO Jan. 20.
