TapImmune (NASDAQ:TPIV) jumped $3.05 (51%) to $9 Friday after it priced a $70 million private placement led by new investor New Enterprise Associates. The company is selling 17.5 million shares at $4. New investors Aisling Capital and Perceptive Advisors also participated as did other undisclosed new and existing investors.
The price is a 33% discount to TapImmune's Thursday close of $5.95. Investors will also receive five-year warrants to purchase 13.1 million shares at $5.
The placement's closing is subject to the closing of TapImmune's merger with Marker Therapeutics Inc. (New Brighton, Minn.), which TapImmune announced May 15 and expects to close by the end of 3Q18. Friday's financing will give the combined company runway into 2H21.
The enlarged company will use Marker Therapeutics' multi-antigen targeted cell therapy platform with TapImmune's peptide vaccine portfolio. The most advanced product in the combined pipeline, TapImmune's TPIV200, is a multi-epitope folate receptor 1 (FOLR1; FR-alpha) peptide vaccine in Phase II testing to treat ovarian cancer.
TapImmune said it will use the new funds to develop its existing pipeline, advance a T cell therapy from Marker into multiple Phase II trials and build out its operational and clinical facilities. On the Marker merger announcement, TapImmune said it is finalizing a deal with Baylor College of Medicine that includes manufacturing support and advancing trials at the institution.
In conjunction with the merger, TapImmune said on May 16 it created a scientific advisory board that includes Malcolm Brenner, founding director of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor and former president of the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) and International Society for Cell Therapy.
Piper Jaffray and Nomura were placement agents.