Just over a month af­ter for­mer mi­Ra­gen Ther­a­peu­tics COO Lee Rauch stepped up to take the helm, the mi­cro­cap is scoop­ing up Virid­i­an Ther­a­peu­tics — and with it, a new lead can­di­date and $91 mil­lion boost.

mi­Ra­gen’s work­force was cut in half by a cost­ly re­struc­tur­ing plan ini­ti­at­ed last Au­gust, with 44 po­si­tions elim­i­nat­ed. Dis­cov­ery re­search was side­lined, while the mi­croR­NA-fo­cused biotech fo­cused on the four pro­grams it had. About a year lat­er, CEO William Mar­shall re­signed, leav­ing Rauch to pick up the pieces.

Now, the Boul­der, CO-based biotech is bet­ting its fu­ture on VRDN-001 — the thy­roid eye dis­ease (TED) can­di­date it picked up from Virid­i­an. The in­sulin-like growth fac­tor-1 re­cep­tor (IGF-1R) mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body was orig­i­nal­ly li­censed from Im­muno­Gen, which is still el­i­gi­ble for ad­di­tion­al de­vel­op­men­tal mile­stones and “mid-sin­gle-dig­it” roy­al­ty pay­ments, ac­cord­ing to mi­Ra­gen.

TED can lead to bulging eyes, dou­ble-vi­sion and po­ten­tial blind­ness. mi­Ra­gen plans on launch­ing VRDN-001 in­to a Phase II study for the in­di­ca­tion in 2021. The com­pa­ny is al­so ready­ing an IND ap­pli­ca­tion for VRDN-002: a pro­gram start­ed by Virid­i­an to im­prove IGF-1R-tar­get­ed an­ti­bod­ies by us­ing half-life ex­ten­sion tech­nol­o­gy to re­duce the dose re­quired for full ef­fi­ca­cy and en­hance sol­u­bil­i­ty.

The Virid­i­an buy­out was a stock-for-stock trans­ac­tion, mean­ing all of Virid­i­an’s out­stand­ing eq­ui­ty in­ter­ests were ex­changed for a com­bi­na­tion of com­mon stock and Se­ries A pre­ferred stock shares. In ad­di­tion, mi­Ra­gen en­tered a $91 mil­lion pri­vate place­ment with new and old in­vestors, who were is­sued Se­ries A pre­ferred stock at $465.96 per share.

The pri­vate place­ment, which clos­es at the end of this month, was led by Fair­mount Funds Man­age­ment with help from Ven­rock Health­care Cap­i­tal Part­ners, BVF Part­ners, Cor­morant As­set Man­age­ment, Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors, Welling­ton Man­age­ment, Al­ly Bridge Group, Lo­gos Cap­i­tal, Sur­vey­or Cap­i­tal, Com­modore Cap­i­tal and Ridge­back Cap­i­tal. Pro­ceeds are tagged for the de­vel­op­ment of  VRDN-001.

mi­Ra­gen’s stock $MGEN jumped more than 93% up­on news of the ac­qui­si­tion — though the share price is still hov­er­ing around $1 a piece. Yes­ter­day, shares closed at about $0.52 each.

“Af­ter a thor­ough eval­u­a­tion of strate­gic al­ter­na­tives, the Board of Di­rec­tors of mi­Ra­gen be­lieves this ac­qui­si­tion rep­re­sents the high­est-po­ten­tial val­ue cre­ation op­por­tu­ni­ty for mi­Ra­gen’s stock­hold­ers,” Jef­frey Hat­field, chair­man of mi­Ra­gen’s board of di­rec­tors, said in a state­ment. “We are ex­cit­ed by the po­ten­tial for VRDN-001 to be­come a mean­ing­ful treat­ment op­tion for pa­tients liv­ing with TED.”

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.