More than a year after filing an S-1 for an initial public offering (IPO), Oncomed Pharmaceuticals Inc. set proposed terms, seeking to sell 4 million shares priced between $14 and $16.

At the midpoint range, the offering would bring in $60 million in gross proceeds, 48 percent less than the $115 million the Redwood City, Calif.-based firm had hoped to raise when it filed for the IPO in May 2012, the third cancer stem cell firm in quick succession to seek access to public markets. Preclinical-stage Verastem Inc. priced a $55 million offering in January 2012, while Stemline Therapeutics Inc. filed its S-1 in April of last year, pricing a $33 million IPO in early 2013. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 30, 2012, May 17, 2012, and Jan. 30, 2013.)

Both firms have done well on Wall Street so far, with shares of Verastem gaining more than 70 percent since the stock's debut, and shares of Stemline jumping more than 150 percent. It's a trend that could bode well for Oncomed, which aims to list on Nasdaq under the ticker "OMED."

Assuming the firm prices at the midpoint range, Oncomed anticipates net proceeds of about $51.9 million – or about $60.3 million if underwriters exercise their overallotment option in full – and most of those funds will be used for clinical and R&D work, including advancing its lead internal program, demcizumab (OMP-21M18), through Phase II trials.

While standard cancer drugs target bulk tumor cells, they don't affect cancer stem cells, or CSCs, which Oncomed said are believed to be for driving growth and metastasis of tumors, allowing them to self-renew. Demcizumab, for example, is a monoclonal antibody designed to target delta-like ligand 4 (DLL4) from the Notch signaling pathway, which appears to be involved in that self-renewal process, enabling the survival of CSCs.

A single-agent Phase Ia trial in heavily pretreated patients with advanced solid tumors showed activity and a disease control rate of 64 percent in the highest dose cohort. Oncomed has since moved into two Phase Ib combination trials, testing demcizumab plus gemcitabine in pancreatic cancer patients and demcizumab plus carboplatin and Alimta (pemetrexed, Eli Lilly and Co.) in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer.

Also internally the firm has identified the R-spondin, or RSPO, ligand signaling through the LGR receptor family as another CSC pathway. That program is in preclinical development, and Oncomed said an investigational new drug application could be filed as early as 2014. A third program, an anti-DLL4/anti-VEGF bispecific monoclonal antibody, also is expected to move into the clinic next year.

The company is working on several compounds as part of a 2007 partnership with Glaxosmithkline plc worth potentially $1.4 billion. The lead program from that collaboration, an anti-Notch2/3 antibody dubbed OMP-59R5, started a Phase Ib/II study in May, triggering an $8 million milestone payment from London-based GSK. The study will evaluate dose-escalation and expansion in the Phase Ib portion and will be tested against placebo in combination with cisplatin or etoposide in the Phase II portion. The primary endpoint is progression-free survival. (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 11, 2007.)

A partnership with Bayer AG is advancing a monoclonal antibody, vantictumab (OMP-18R5) against Frizzled7 receptor, part of the Wnt pathway. That program is in a Phase I single-agent trial in advanced solid tumor patients. Under the terms of the collaboration, Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer has an option to exclusively license vantictumab at any time through completion of certain Phase I studies.

A second Wnt program in the Bayer alliance, OMP-54F28, is expected to start Phase Ib testing late this year or early next year in tumor types. That drug is designed to target the Frizzled8 receptor.

Since its founding in 2004, Oncomed has raised about $326 million in equity financings, with another $137.5 million coming from collaboration revenue. As of March 31, it had about $60.2 million on its balance sheet.

After the offering, the firm will have about 26.3 million shares outstanding. Jefferies, Piper Jaffray, Leerink Swann and BMO Capital Markets are acting as underwriters.

In other financings news:

• Vida Therapeutics Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, said it closed a C$1.8 million (US$1.7 million) equity financing round led by BDC Venture Capital and including support from a number of angel investors. The new funding will support additional preclinical research to further demonstrate the mechanism by which extracellular Granzyme B contributes to the pathology of a number of inflammatory and age-related conditions of the skin, musculoskeletal, cardiovascular and neurological systems.