With Big Phar­ma castoffs in hand, Mereo files for $81M IPO; Lon­don's Verona sees stock surge on PhI­Ib COPD da­ta

→ Mereo Bio­Phar­ma, a Lon­don biotech de­vel­op­ing a pipeline of as­sets it snagged from Big Phar­ma shelves, is head­ing to the Nas­daq with hopes of rais­ing around $81 mil­lion in an IPO. The com­pa­ny is al­ready list­ed on the Lon­don Stock Ex­change and plans to use the ex­tra cash to de­vel­op at least three drug can­di­dates through mid-stage tri­als. In an SEC state­ment sig­nal­ing the stock of­fer­ing, Mereo said the mon­ey would fu­el two pro­grams it picked up from No­var­tis and one it got from As­traZeneca. The pro­ceeds should get BPS-804 (setrusum­ab), an ex-No­var­tis rare dis­ease drug for pa­tients with os­teo­ge­n­e­sis im­per­fec­ta, in­to Phase IIb/III tri­als in 2018. The cash will al­so fund the ex-No­var­tis drug BGS-649 for the treat­ment of hy­pog­o­nadotrop­ic hy­pog­o­nadism in obese men through Phase IIb and in­to late-stage tri­als; and AZD-9668, a res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­ease as­set Mereo out-li­censed from As­traZeneca last fall, through proof-of-con­cept tri­als. Mereo plans to list un­der the stock sym­bol $MPH.

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