Just days before presenting at ASH conference, Syndax outlines plan to raise $150M

Syndax is banking that upcoming clinical data will be enough to woo investors — to the tune of $150 million.

The biotech kept it short in its announcement Tuesday afternoon, saying it is planning to sell $150 million worth of shares of its stock via a public offering. While no date or exact number of shares was given for the offering, the biotech noted it will be giving underwriters 30 days to purchase up to an additional 15% of shares sold in the public offering.

An SEC filing pointed out where the funds would go, including to clinical development of its two lead drugs, expenses tied to a potential commercial launch, manufacturing investments and more.

The timing of the announcement coincides with clinical data Syndax will present on one of its drugs, SNDX-5613, at the American Society of Hematology conference in New Orleans on Saturday.

Michael Metzger

CEO Michael Metzger, who took the reins of the biotech earlier this year, tells Endpoints News that the offering seemed like the right time, pointing to the drug receiving breakthrough therapy designation from the FDA on Monday — and regardless of the timing of the medical conference.

“To us, it was just the opportunity to raise when it was open to us, whether it was before the meeting or after the meeting or some other time. Sometimes it’s hard to really plan it exactly how you see it, but for us, it was this was the right time to do it. We had a lot of inbound interest from investors, and we took advantage of that,” Metzger said.

Metzger also said that the $150 million will be enough to take the company into 2025, well past its planned timeline of potentially both FDA approval and a commercial launch in the US for both of its lead drugs.

However, investors might be exercising caution until all the data at ASH are presented. Although the price of $SNDX is up almost 30% over the last six months, the biotech’s share price has fallen more than 10% so far since the markets opened this morning.

This is one of the newest updates for the company after a major setback with its former lead drug three years ago, where its class I HDAC inhibitor entinostat, combined with hormone therapy exemestane in 600 patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, did not extend patients’ lives when compared to exemestane alone.

“We’re disappointed that the combination of entinostat and exemestane did not demonstrate a survival benefit in this historically difficult-to-treat patient population,” said former Syndax CEO Briggs Morrison at the time.

In a bid to get past that failure, the company pivoted to two early stage drugs in its pipeline — one being SNDX-5613, an oral menin inhibitor. Data came out in 2021 that showed the drug, also known as revumenib, achieved a 48% overall response rate in 31 evaluable patients with acute leukemias.

The other drug in Syndax’s pipeline, axatilimab, is currently under investigation for chronic graft versus host disease. Those drugs are currently in pivotal trials, with planned readouts tentatively scheduled for sometime next year.

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