Pub­lic of­fer­ings and pri­vate place­ments have for years been part of the lex­i­con for Nas­daq-list­ed bio­phar­mas, but they’ve be­come more promi­nent amid a bear mar­ket and a com­mon tac­tic for drug de­vel­op­ers in the hours and days af­ter dis­clos­ing pos­i­tive news.

Lex­i­con Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is the lat­est. A day af­ter say­ing the FDA had ac­cept­ed its drug re­sub­mis­sion for heart fail­ure, the Texas biotech eyes $85 mil­lion in gross pro­ceeds from a pub­lic of­fer­ing and a pri­vate place­ment, al­most split even­ly.

In­vestors wiped out about 21% of the biotech’s shares $LXRX be­fore the open­ing bell Thurs­day. The stock climbed about 4% Wednes­day af­ter Lex­i­con said the FDA would re­view so­tagliflozin for heart fail­ure, af­ter mul­ti­ple de­nials in type 1 di­a­betes.

The pub­lic of­fer­ing of 16.8 mil­lion shares is at $2.50 apiece, well be­low the $3.27 clos­ing price Wednes­day. The pri­vate place­ment of about 2.57 mil­lion shares — to “one or more af­fil­i­ates” of Lex­i­con’s largest share­hold­er, In­vus — is al­so priced at $2.50 a pop.

Lex­i­con looks to pad its cash re­serves to help bankroll pre-com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties for so­tagliflozin, the com­pa­ny said, as a de­ci­sion is ex­pect­ed by next May. Pro­ceeds will al­so fu­el a com­mer­cial launch, should the FDA ap­prove the drug. Ad­di­tion­al fi­nanc­ing will be set aside for LX9211 in neu­ro­path­ic pain. The AAK1 in­hibitor passed the pri­ma­ry goal of one of two Phase II stud­ies, Lex­i­con said last month, with the oth­er tri­al ex­pect­ed to read out in the third quar­ter.

In the 319-pa­tient RE­LIEF-DPN-1 clin­i­cal tri­al, LX9211 achieved the pri­ma­ry end­point by show­ing a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in a score of av­er­age dai­ly pain, with the low dose arm show­ing a re­duc­tion of 1.39 points from base­line and the high dose arm ex­hibit­ing a 1.27-point re­duc­tion. The place­bo group showed a 0.72-point re­duc­tion.

Lex­i­con al­so pre­vi­ous­ly inked a $150 mil­lion loan fa­cil­i­ty with Ox­ford Fi­nance, which is split in­to mul­ti­ple tranch­es, in­clud­ing a $25 mil­lion one trig­gered by yes­ter­day’s ac­cept­ed NDA fil­ing.

Rising monkeypox cases have put the US on high alert as it announces a national health emergency, which grants the government more power in its response.

The news comes as Bavarian Nordic continues to fill orders for its Jynneos vaccine and other companies – including Moderna – consider jumping into the vaccine race. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the US has allowed around 20 million doses of smallpox vaccine in its stockpile to expire.

Forget buyer’s remorse, Pfizer is likely feeling pretty good about its $11.6 billion Biohaven takeover deal following reports of a 57% sales boost for migraine med Nurtec.

Biohaven reported in Q2 results on Friday that it’s cleared the necessary antitrust hurdles to move forward with the sale of its calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) assets to Pfizer. However, because the company is “focused on workstreams related to the closing” of the deal, it did not host a call with analysts and investors.