National Editor

Telik Inc. upped the size of its planned public offering and priced it, raising $74.75 million by selling 6.5 million shares at $11.50 per share, with an overallotment option for underwriters of 975,000 shares.

Proceeds, after underwriting discounts and commissions and offering expenses, will total $69.9 million ($80.4 million if the overallotment option is exercised), according to the company's prospectus related to the offering.

Carol DeGuzman, senior director of corporate communications, said the South San Francisco-based company is in a quiet period as required by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and could not comment.

The company has a small-molecule drug, TLK286, lined up for Phase III registration trials in platinum-refractory or -resistant ovarian cancer by the first quarter of 2003, after saying in early September that its meeting with the FDA had gone well. (See BioWorld Today, Sept. 13, 2002.)

TLK 286 triggers apoptosis when activated by glutathione S-transferase P1-1, an enzyme overexpressed in many human cancers. Higher levels of GST P1-1 also correlate with chemotherapeutic drug resistance.

This spring, preliminary results of a Phase II trial of TLK286 in patients with advanced, platinum-resistant, non-small-cell lung cancer showed single-agent antitumor activity in patients with what was described as highly resistant disease. Another Phase II trial's early data showed significant single-agent activity in advanced ovarian cancer.

Further back in the pipeline is TLK199, a small-molecule white blood cell booster, undergoing Phase I/IIa trials in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome, a form of pre-leukemia. Telik also is developing a family of orally active insulin receptor activators for diabetes.

Telik said in mid-September it aimed to offer about 5 million shares under a shelf registration filed in June. The company uses what it calls TRAP chemogenomics technology, for quicker and more efficient screening of compounds, measuring the binding of a small molecule to a proprietary reference panel of proteins to create a profile for each compound. (See BioWorld Today, Sept. 13, 2002.)

Sole book-running manager of the offering, which leaves Telik with about 34.48 million shares outstanding, is UBS Warburg LLC in New York. The underwriters are Warburg; Wachovia Securities Inc., of New York; Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc., of Baltimore; Needham & Co., of New York; Stephens Inc., of Little Rock, Ark.; Fulcrum Global Partners LLC, of New York; and Westfield Bakerink Brozak LLC, of Newport Beach, Calif.

Telik's stock (NASDAQ:TELK) closed Friday at $12.04, up 9 cents.