As the nation slept, women’s health company Myovant Sciences quietly completed the largest biotech initial public offering (IPO) of 2016, amassing $218 million on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares will trade under the ticker symbol (NYSE: MYOV).
At the heart of Myovant’s impressive stock price is an agreement with Takeda Pharmaceuticals, which traded global rights to its small molecule relugolix for minority shares in the company and future royalties. Takeda will retain commercial rights to the drug in certain Asian countries, including Japan, where it is currently undertaking Phase 3 trials.
In a phone interview, Myovant CEO Lynn Seely, M.D., said the company will use the funds to launch three new multinational Phase 3 trials in early 2017. The studies will test the efficacy of relugolix, a once-daily pill, as a non-surgical treatment for uterine fibroids, endometriosis, and prostate cancer.
“We’re obviously thrilled at the way it went and I think it underscores the investors’ enthusiasm for these women’s health indications,” Seely said in reference to the IPO. “This field has been largely ignored by biopharma and I think we have a real opportunity here to draw attention to it, to get investment in this space and really to start to welcome innovative therapies for women with these diseases.”
If this is the first you’ve heard about Myovant, that’s understandable.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The company launched just five months ago as a spin-out from Roivant Sciences, a company founded and run by 31-year-old biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy. In 2015, Ramaswamy orchestrated the largest ever biotech IPO, raising $360 million for another Roivant spin-out, Axovant Sciences.
There are many common threads between the companies. Each has formed around a licensing agreement with Big Pharma, breathing fresh life into an investigational drug with a shrewd business model.
All three are headquartered in Bermuda, but appear to operate out of the U.S. Myovant’s research and development facility is currently under construction in San Francisco, where its CEO resides.
When asked about the Bermuda base, Seely said the company is international with additional offices in San Francisco and Switzerland. While there are just nine employees on the books, she said the company plans to rapidly expand. In the meantime, they are fully plugged into the Roivant development team, which has helped plan the Phase 3 trials.
While the business model is interesting, Seely emphasized that the company’s real focus is on treating women’s health issues.
“Obviously raising money for a large Phase 3 program is a critical and necessary step and so this is just fantastic that we now have the resources we need to turn our attention to the real mission, which is to develop a medical therapy for women with endometriosis and uterine fibroids.”
Myovant’s primary emphasis is women’s health, but the team is also planning a study of the its lead molecule on men with prostate cancer. The compound is a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) receptor antagonist, which means it blocks both estrogen and progesterone production in women and testosterone production in men.
This third market drew the attention of Pfizer, which was one of the lead investors in the IPO, committing $30 million. Seely said Pfizer’s interest is in the prostate cancer space. They will now have first negotiation rights and an option to buy any assets sold for that indication.
Myovant has a second compound in its pipeline, RVT-602, which was also licensed from Takeda as a treatment for female infertility. If successful, RVT-602 would be implemented in the hormonal preparation phase of in vitro fertilization.
There’s no doubt 2017 will be a busy year for Myovant. It now needs to build some human capital to match what was raised financially in its blockbuster IPO — all while embarking upon three simultaneous clinical trials.
Photo: Myovant Sciences
