Congratulations to Goodwin’s IP client, Cogent Biosciences, on the closing of its previously announced upsized underwritten public offering of 25,555,556 shares of its common stock, which includes 3,333,333 shares issued pursuant to the exercise in full by the underwriters of their option to purchase additional shares of common stock in the offering. The public offering price was $9.00 per share. The aggregate gross proceeds to Cogent from the offering were approximately $230 million, including proceeds from the exercise in full of the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses.
The deal comes after Cogent reported impressive results last week from its registrational SUMMIT clinical trial that was designed to assess the clinical benefit of bezuclastinib versus placebo in patients with non-advanced systemic mastocytosis. The trial achieved its primary endpoint with a highly statistically significant difference in the mean change in total symptom score (TSS) at 24 weeks (p=0.0002). Bezuclastinib also demonstrated a favorable safety and tolerability profile supporting chronic use in this patient population. Based on these results, Cogent plans to submit a New Drug Application later in 2025. In addition, later this year Cogent also plans to present top-line results from two additional pivotal trials of bezuclastinib, APEX and PEAK, for patients with advanced systemic mastocytosis and GIST, respectively.
Cogent Biosciences is a biotechnology company focused on developing precision therapies for genetically defined diseases. The most advanced clinical program, bezuclastinib, is a selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor that is designed to potently inhibit the KIT D816V mutation as well as other mutations in KIT exon 17. KIT D816V is responsible for driving systemic mastocytosis, a serious disease caused by unchecked proliferation of mast cells. Exon 17 mutations are also found in patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors, a type of cancer with strong dependence on oncogenic KIT signaling. The company also has an ongoing Phase 1 study of its novel internally discovered FGFR2 inhibitor. In addition, the Cogent Research Team is developing a portfolio of novel targeted therapies to help patients fighting serious, genetically driven diseases targeting mutations in ErbB2, PI3Kα and KRAS. Cogent Biosciences is based in Waltham, MA and Boulder, CO.
The Goodwin IP team on the public offering was led by Michael Siekman, Miho Kaneko, and Diondra Dilworth.
To learn more about the data readout and subsequent offering, please read the press releases.