By Lisa Seachrist

Washington Editor

Vion Pharmaceuticals Inc. intends to raise more than $19 million in a public offering of stock to steer its cancer-targeting technologies to the market.

The New Haven, Conn.-based company registered to sell 3.6 million shares of common stock in a public offering. The offering will be managed by the New York investment banking firm Brean Murray & Co.

At the company's current stock (NASDAQ:VION) price - which closed down 3.12 cents per share Wednesday at $5.344 - Vion would gross about $19.2 million. Should the overallotment of 540,000 shares be exercised at the current trading price, the company would bring in nearly $2.9 million more.

Vion will use the funds it raises for "general corporate purposes," including the clinical development of its core technology, Tumor Amplified Protein Expression Therapy (TAPET). The TAPET program is an innovative means to effectively deliver toxic anticancer agents to tumor sites with little effect on normal tissues.

Vion officials were in a "quiet period" and could not comment.

The company employs genetically altered strains of the Salmonella bacteria to deliver cancer therapeutics to tumor cells. The company, in collaboration with researchers at Yale University, modified the lipopolysaccharide, Lipid A, on the outside of the bacterial cell wall to reduce the chances of septic shock and then stymied the organism's ability to make the purine building blocks of DNA. As a result, the bacteria seek out tumors that produce large amounts of purines - adenine and guanine - in order to survive.

By linking cancer therapeutics to the modified TAPET bacteria Vion hopes to target tumor cells without causing septic shock. In addition, the bacteria have been engineered to be antibiotic-sensitive, allowing physicians simply to treat with antibiotics should patients develop dangerous side effects.

Preclinical work with TAPET indicated the technology could be effective in a range of solid tumors, including melanoma, colon, lung and breast cancer. The company is planning to file an investigational new drug application to start intratumoral safety studies in humans in the third quarter of this year.

In addition to TAPET, Vion is developing Promycin, a therapy that targets the oxygen-starved tumor cells at the center of the tumor that are particularly difficult to destroy. The company has that product in a Phase III clinical study in head and neck cancer in collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, of Ingelheim, Germany. The trial is designed to determine the efficacy of Promycin as an adjunct to radiation therapy. Vion intends to begin evaluating Promycin in other tumor types early next year.

Vion also is developing Triapine, a drug that blocks a critical step in DNA synthesis as a way to prevent replication of tumor cells. It is in Phase I safety studies. Finally, Vion has in preclinical development Sulfonyl Hydrazine Prodrugs, which enter the body as inert compounds and are converted into potent alkylating agents.