Utrecht, The Netherlands and Cambridge, Massachusetts – Gilde Healthcare, the private equity firm dedicated to the healthcare sector, announces the successful NASDAQ listing of its portfolio company Ascendis Pharma A/S (NASDAQ:ASND), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company. Ascendis gained $0.83 to $18.83 in its first day of trading after raising $108 million in an upsized IPO on NASDAQ through the sale of 6 million shares at $18. The IPO price values Ascendis at $412.8 million. BofA Merrill Lynch, Leerink Partners and Wells Fargo were underwriters.
Ascendis was founded in 2007 by serial entrepreneur Jan Mikkelsen together with Gilde Healthcare and Sofinnova Partners. Ascendis is focused on creating drug candidates that are improved versions of existing drugs, yielding more effective, lower-risk drugs with new patent life. Ascendis’ lead candidate is a once-weekly therapy for the orphan disease growth hormone deficiency (GHD). It has also established multi-product collaborations (preclinical) aimed at reducing the frequency of Sanofi’s diabetes drugs and Genentech’s ophthalmology drug Lucentis.
The listing of Ascendis marks the ninth exit of Gilde Healthcare in the past twelve months.
About Ascendis Pharma A/S
Ascendis Pharma A/S is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company applying its TransCon technology to develop a pipeline of long-acting prodrug therapies with best-in-class profiles to address large markets with significant unmet medical needs. Ascendis is focused on creating drug candidates that are improved versions of existing drugs, yielding more effective, lower-risk drugs with new patent life. The lead product is a once-weekly TransCon human growth hormone (hGH) to address the burden of daily injections and suboptimal treatment outcomes that can result from poor patient compliance. TransCon hGH is a prodrug that releases unmodified growth hormone, thus maintaining the same mode of action as currently prescribed daily growth hormone therapies. Clinical studies of TransCon hGH have demonstrated a comparable efficacy, safety, tolerability and immunogenic profile to that of daily growth hormone. Ascendis has partnerships with Sanofi in diabetes and with Genentech in ophthalmology.
Ascendis was founded as a privately held biotech company in December 2007. The company is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, maintains offices in Palo Alto, California and research and clinical development sites in Heidelberg, Germany and Copenhagen, Denmark.
About Gilde Healthcare
Gilde Healthcare (Utrecht, The Netherlands and Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States) is a private equity investor focused on fast growing healthcare businesses. It manages €550 million across five specialized funds. The Gilde Healthcare I, II and III Technology funds target companies developing medicines, medical devices and home & digital health solutions in Europe and the US. The Gilde Healthcare Services funds I and II focus on healthcare service providers, such as specialist clinics, elderly care, primary care, mental health, outsourcing services, medical product suppliers and other healthcare service providers in the Benelux and Germany.
For a list of Gilde’s portfolio companies please visit the website at gildehealthcare.com.
The Gilde Healthcare II fund is supported by the European Communities Growth and Employment Initiative, MAP-ETF Start up Facility.