The Walloon biotech company iTeos to enter Nasdaq

Three months after completing a new record fund-raising round, the Belgian-American biotech company iTeos Therapeutics is about to enter the Nasdaq. The company has in fact filed an application for an initial public offering (IPO) with the SEC, the American regulator, announced the Wall Street stock exchange on Wednesday evening, June 24th, in a press release. The objective of this IPO is to raise up to $100 million in financial resources. The banks JPMorgan, SVB Leerink and Piper Sandler are supervising the operation.

A spin-off of UCLouvain and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, iTeos specialises in immunotherapy treatments for cancer. Its HQ and all its research facilities are in the Gosselies Biopark, but it also has an American site in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where CEO Michel Detheux resides.

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iTeos raised $125 million at the beginning of April in a new round

The company had raised $125 million at the beginning of April during a new round, the largest in the history of Walloon biotechnology and even the largest round of capital for an unlisted growth company in the country. 

The Series B2 financing round was co-led by RA Capital Management and Boxer Capital and included new investors Janus Henderson Investors, Invus, and  RTW Investments along with existing investors Curative Ventures, MPM Capital, SFPI, Fund+, VIVES Louvain Technology Fund, 6 Dimensions Capital, SRIW, and HBM Partners.

“We are very pleased to have the strong support of this leading class of investors who share our excitement for the highly innovative oncology therapies we have developed at iTeos,” said Michel Detheux, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer at iTeos. “We look forward to accelerating and expanding our clinical development efforts to identify the most promising indications and combinations for people suffering with cancer. This financing maximizes our ability to execute our development plans alone or in partnership.”

The company is developing two major programs

iTeos has two important programs in advanced development. The first is a product candidate called EOS-850, which is already in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial with patients with various solid tumors. This molecule attacks the mechanisms that tumors put in place to evade the immune system, whether this is stimulated by drugs (in the case of immunotherapy) or is the normal response to different types of aggression.

This study, which is taking place at various centers in Belgium, among others, is being conducted as monotherapy, but also as a complement to an already used anti-cancer treatment. iTeos has concluded an agreement with the American group Merck at the end of 2019 to evaluate the safety and efficacy of its flagship product in combination with the immunotherapy treatment Keytruda.

In addition, the biotech company has just started the first part of another Phase 1/2 clinical trial for a second product candidate, an antibody (named EOS-448) that targets a specific antigen. This second product targets both solid cancers and hematological malignancies. It is part of a very promising new class of immunotherapies known by the acronym TIGIT. 

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First published in L’Echo, a third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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