CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 19, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Acer Therapeutics Inc., (Nasdaq:ACER), a pharmaceutical company focused on the acquisition, development and commercialization of therapies for serious rare and ultra-rare diseases with critical unmet medical need, announced that today it completed the merger with Opexa Therapeutics, Inc., under which the stockholders of Acer (including investors in a financing that closed concurrently with the merger) become holders of 88.8% of combined company’s outstanding common stock, with Opexa shareholders retaining 11.2%.
In conjunction with the merger, a syndicate of existing and new investors led by TVM Capital Life Sciences invested approximately $15.7 million in Acer (including through a conversion of approximately $5.7 million in outstanding convertible notes) immediately prior to closing of the merger.
“Acer’s goal is to become a leading pharmaceutical company that acquires, develops and commercializes therapies for the treatment of patients with serious rare and ultra-rare diseases with critical unmet medical need,” said Chris Schelling, Chief Executive Officer and founder of Acer. “We have committed significant resources to rapidly advance our lead candidate EDSIVO™, a potential life-saving therapy for patients with vEDS. We believe that the proceeds from the concurrent financing will allow us to advance EDSIVO™ through NDA submission with the FDA in the first half of 2018. As a public company, we now look forward to engaging with a broader pool of investors as we seek to advance and expand our pipeline and make multiple products available to patients over the next several years.”
About the Merger
Existing stockholders of Acer, as well as investors in Acer’s concurrent financing, received newly issued shares of Opexa common stock in connection with the merger. In the combined company: (a) Opexa shareholders retained 11.2%, (b) Acer stockholders own 63.8% (excluding shares issued to them in the concurrent financing), and (c) the investors participating in the concurrent financing own 25% (excluding shares previously held by them). The combined company has approximately 6.6 million shares of common stock outstanding, following a reverse split of 1-for-10.355527.
Upon completion of the merger today, Opexa was renamed Acer Therapeutics Inc. The combined company will commence trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol “ACER” on September 21, 2017.
The directors and the sole executive officer of Opexa resigned from their positions with Opexa upon the closing of the merger, and the combined company is now under the leadership of Acer’s current executive management team with Chris Schelling serving as President and Chief Executive Officer. The board of directors of the combined company consists of 7 members: Steve Aselage, Jason Amello, Hubert Birner, John Dunn, Michelle Griffin, Luc Marengere and Mr. Schelling.
About Acer Therapeutics
Acer, headquartered in Cambridge, MA, is a pharmaceutical company that acquires, develops and intends to commercialize therapies for patients with serious rare and ultra-rare diseases with critical unmet medical need. Acer’s late-stage clinical pipeline includes two candidates for severe genetic disorders for which there are few or no FDA-approved treatments: EDSIVO™ (celiprolol) for vEDS, and ACER-001 (a fully taste-masked, immediate release formulation of sodium phenylbutyrate) for urea cycle disorders (UCD) and Maple Syrup Urine Disease (MSUD). There are no FDA-approved drugs for vEDS and MSUD and limited options for UCD, which collectively impact more than 4,000 patients in the United States. Acer’s products have clinical proof-of-concept and mechanistic differentiation, and Acer intends to seek approval for them in the United States by using the regulatory pathway established under section 505(b)(2) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, or FFDCA, that allows an applicant to rely for approval at least in part on third-party data, which is expected to expedite the preparation, submission, and approval of a marketing application.
For more information, visit www.acertx.com.
