Zentalis Pharmaceuticals Shares Up After the Company Reported $25 Million Equity Investment from Pfizer
Apr 27, 2022 By MarketDepth
Zentalis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNTL) stock is up more than 15% after the pharmaceutical company announced that it has agreed to sell 953,834 of its common shares at a price of $26.21 per share to Pfizer for gross proceeds of $25.0 million (the “Transaction”). The common shares were offered and sold to Pfizer in a registered direct offering conducted without an underwriter or placement agent. The offering is expected to close on or about April 29, 2022, subject to customary closing conditions. Zentalis intends to use the net proceeds of the offering to help fund ongoing and planned clinical trials, including studies of ZN-c3, its Wee1 inhibitor, and ZN-d5, its BCL-2 inhibitor, and for working capital and general corporate purposes. With prioritization of the clinical development of ZN-c3 and ZN-d5, budget reallocation and Pfizer’s investment, the Company extends current cash runway into Q1 2024.
“Given Pfizer’s deep expertise in developing treatments for genitourinary cancers, we are proud not only to receive capital support but to partner with them to develop a potential treatment option for patients living with cancer. We look forward to advancing our promising therapeutics to hopefully realize the full potential of our internally discovered oncology pipeline.”
Dr. Anthony Sun, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Zentalis
“We are proud to support Zentalis and to assist in the clinical advancement of its pipeline,” said Chris Boshoff, M.D., Ph.D., FMedSci, Chief Development Officer, Pfizer Oncology. “We believe Zentalis’ commitment to developing innovative treatments holds promise, and we are looking forward to continuing our relationship to potentially help better the lives of people with cancer.”
Pfizer Leveraging Development Capabilities
According to Zentalis, Pfizer also expects to leverage its global development capabilities and expertise to enhance Zentalis’ clinical development program. The parties have entered into an agreement to collaborate to advance the clinical development of ZN-c3, a selective Wee1 inhibitor designed to induce synthetic lethality in cancer cells.
Zentalis is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company which is focused on discovering and developing small molecule therapeutics with the purpose of targeting fundamental biological pathways of cancers.
