Silence Therapeutics raises £33m to support pipeline development

Novel therapeutics developer Silence Therapeutics announced an oversubscribed private placement of 2,022,218 American depositary shares (ADSs) on Friday, raising £33m to support the development of its pipeline.

The AIM-traded firm said each ADS represented three of its ordinary shares, and were placed at a price of $22.50 each with new and existing institutional and accredited investors.

It said it expected the aggregate gross proceeds of the placement to be approximately U$45m (£33m) before fees and expenses.

The offering was expected to close on 9 February, subject to standard conditions.

Silence said the financing syndicate included Adage Capital Management, BVF Partners.P., Consonance Capital, Great Point Partners, and other investors.

The company said it intended to use the net proceeds from the placement primarily to support development of its pipeline based on its messenger ‘RNAi GOLD’, or GalNAc oligonucleotide discovery platform, and for general corporate purposes.

“This financing marks an important step in our journey to increase awareness of Silence and position our company as a global RNAi leader,” said president and chief executive officer Mark Rothera.

“We expect to build on this momentum throughout 2021, starting with the first clinical data from our mRNAi GOLD platform due out the first half of this year, followed by patient data from our two wholly owned programmes - SLN360 for cardiovascular disease due to high lipoprotein(a) and SLN124 for patients with iron loading anemias.

“Silence is a company that is poised for growth and I look forward to a very exciting 2021 and beyond.”

At 0838 GMT, shares in Silence Therapeutics were down 1.69% at 572.16p.