West Coast Editor

Continuing its roughly once-a-month news trend, Point Therapeutics Inc. priced an offering of about 8.1 million shares of common stock at $3 per share to raise $24.2 million, with net proceeds expected to total about $22.2 million.

Boston-based Point's stock (NASDAQ:POTP) closed Tuesday at $3.53, up 38 cents, or 12 percent.

Word of the stock pricing comes a month after the company started its Phase III program to evaluate the lead product, talabostat, in metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer, and that disclosure came less than a month after details about advances with the Phase II study testing the same drug for leukemia. (See BioWorld Today, Oct. 17, 2005.)

A spokeswoman from Point said the company was in a quiet period and could not comment. But there's no shortage of uses for the cash raised.

The pair of Phase III trials, involving as many as 800 patients at about 100 sites in North America, are giving the drug to patients afflicted with Stage IIIb/IV NSCLC who have failed platinum-based chemotherapy. Results are due at the end of 2007.

In the first study, Point is trying oral talabostat in combination with docetaxel vs. docetaxel with placebo. The second uses the drug in combination with pemetrexed vs. pemetrexed with placebo. Docetaxel and pemetrexed are the current standard of care in that advanced patient population.

Progression-free survival is the primary endpoint in both trials, with secondary endpoints including overall survival, objective response rate, complete response, duration of response and quality of life.

Point has a two-year orphan products development grant of $600,000 from the FDA to fund its Phase II study of talabostat in combination with rituximab in advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia. In the first quarter of next year, after finishing the Phase II trial (which completed its first stage in September), the company will decide whether to move into Phase III.

Talabostat, which inhibits DPP enzymes to boost IL-1b and promote immune response, also is being studied in two Phase II trials against Stage IV melanoma, as a single agent and with cisplatin, with a decision likely at the end of this year whether to start Phase III.

Earlier this month, Point said results of one 42-patient Phase II study in patients with Stage IV melanoma showed that two patients had a response to talabostat, as defined by RECIST (a 30 percent or greater reduction in tumor size), and one of those patients got a complete response. The Kaplan-Meier estimates for single-agent talabostat are 7.1 months for median survival and 1.5 months for median progression-free survival. Results from the trial were presented at the International Society for Biological Therapy of Cancer meeting in Alexandria, Va.

There's more. In June, Point began a Phase II trial with the compound combined with gemcitabine against metastatic pancreatic cancer, which could be the quickest route to approval if the data prove strong enough, but the push for now is on NSCLC.

Last month, Point made public its plan to sell 6 million shares but backed off a week later, citing market conditions. In the priced offering of about 8.1 million shares, which is expected to close Nov. 28, Point has granted underwriters an option to buy up to about 1.2 million more shares to cover overallotments, if any. Pacific Growth Equities LLC, of San Francisco, is the sole book-runner, with CIBC World Markets Corp., of New York, acting as a co-lead manager.