Shares of small-cap pancreatic cancer biotech Actuate Therapeutics (ACTU) shot up 23.5 percent to open at $9.88 at 10:45 a.m. EDT today – Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024 – up $1.88 from the $8.00 IPO price – in their NASDAQ trading debut. Volume was 8,894 shares on that opening trade, according to NASDAQ records. At the closing bell, Actuate Therapeutics’ stock was at $8.61 – up 61 cents or 7.63 percent in its first day of NASDAQ trading. During the day, the stock swung from a session low of $7.50 touched at around 11:28 a.m. EDT to the session high of $9.88 – its opening trade.
Actuate Therapeutics priced its IPO at $8.00 – the low end of its $8.00-to-$10.00 price range – and trimmed its IPO at pricing to 2.8 million shares – down from 2.95 million shares in the prospectus – to raise $22.4 million on Monday night, Aug. 12, 2024.
Titan Partners was the sole book-runner. Newbridge Securities was the co-manager.
Actuate Therapeutics, based in Fort Worth, Texas, is evaluating its lead drug candidate, elraglusib, as a weekly IV infusion – in combination with the chemotherapy GnP – to treat patients with metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (mPDAC) in a Phase II clinical trial, according to the prospectus. Results are expected in the first quarter of 2025.
Elraglusib is an ATP competitive small molecule designed to enter cancer cells and block the function of the enzyme GSK-3-beta, which is involved in tumor cell survival, growth, migration and invasion, according to the prospectus.
Actuate Therapeutics exclusively licensed a portfolio of GSK-3 inhibitors developed in a collaboration between the University of Illinois-Chicago and Northwestern University.
Like most biotechs when they go public, Actuate Therapeutics had no revenue and a sizable net loss. For the 12 months that ended March 31, 2024, Actuate Therapeutics reported a net loss of $27.7 million on zero revenue, according to the prospectus.
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