West Coast Editor

A trickle of fourth-quarter activity in initial public offerings continued with AlgoRx Pharmaceuticals Inc. filing to raise up to $75 million in an IPO to advance its pain products.

The company did not specify in its prospectus how many shares or at what price they might be sold, but said underwriters will be Credit Suisse First Boston, of New York, and Citigroup, of New York, acting as joint book-running managers, with Piper Jaffray and Lazard, both of New York, acting as co-managers.

At the start of the year, Secaucus, N.J.-based AlgoRx raised $65 million in a Series C financing for a pair of Phase II drug candidates, ALGRX 3268 and ALGRX 4975.

The first, for which a new drug application is expected to be filed by the end of next year, is a needle-free, pain-free epidermal injection of lidocaine powder that provides local anesthesia for needle or catheter insertion, and will probably be used largely in pediatric patients, the company said, with a market in the U.S. of at least $100 million.

The second is injected capsaicin for injection, expected to enter Phase III trials in 2005 for post-surgical pain. It's also to be studied in osteoarthritis, tendonitis and localized neuropathic pain and post-surgical conditions such as bunionectomy, knee-replacement surgery and sternotomy (chest incision to allow access to the heart).

ALGRX 4975 was in-licensed in August 2001 from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. ALGRX 3268, also called PowderJect Lidocaine, was gained by way of the firm's March 2002 purchase of Oxford, UK-based PowderJect Pharmaceuticals plc's drug business. (See BioWorld Today, March 19, 2002.)

As part of the PowderJect deal, the latter retained a 15 percent stake valued at $10 million in AlgoRx and will get royalties. AlgoRx made the purchase in conjunction with a Series B financing that pulled down $25 million. (See BioWorld Today, March 19, 2002.)

Despite a less than sanguine market, a pair of companies priced their IPOs in October. Theravance Inc., of San Francisco, raised $98.4 million, and CoTherix Inc. took in $30 million. On the heels of raising $44 million in a Series C Round, MediciNova Inc., of San Diego - having just raised $44 million in a Series C round - filed to raise $100 million in an IPO in Japan, where it was founded four years ago as a subsidiary of Tanabe Seiyaku Co. Ltd., of Osaka.

In late September, CardioVascular BioTherapeutics Inc. filed an IPO to sell 2 million shares at $10 each, raising $20 million to advance Vascu-Grow, an injected fibroblast growth factor that boosts angiogenesis.

If its IPO is successful, AlgoRx would trade on Nasdaq under the symbol "AGRX."