Xilio Prices Private Placement Of $11.3 Mln Of Shares, Updates XTX202 Trial; To Axe 21% Of Jobs

(RTTNews) - Xilio Therapeutics, Inc. (XLO), a company focused on tumor-activated immuno-oncology therapies for cancer, announced on Thursday that it has entered into a deal with certain existing investors to issue and sell its 1,953,125 shares at a price of $0.64 per share and prefunded warrants to purchase up to 15,627,441 shares at $0.6399 per prefunded warrant share.

The prefunded warrants will have an exercise price of $0.0001 per share.

Xilio expects gross proceeds of around $11.3 million from the private placement, to be closed on April 2.

The drug maker intends to use the proceeds to fund working capital and other general corporate purposes.

René Russo, CEO of Xilio, said, "This financing enables us to prioritize clinical development for XTX301 as well as XTX101, our tumor-activated, Fc-enhanced anti-CTLA-4, while making focused investments in our promising research-stage pipeline for tumor-activated bispecific and cell engager molecules."

Xilio has also announced additional data from its Phase 2 clinical trial evaluating XTX202, a tumor-activated, beta-gamma biased IL-2, in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma or RCC or unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

A total of 17 RCC patients and 20 melanoma patients were administered XTX202 in the Phase 2 trial at dose levels of 1.4 mg/kg once every three weeks or Q3W or 4 mg/kg Q3W.

In 26 patients evaluable for anti-tumor activity at both dose levels, stable disease continued to be the best response.

Together with previously reported data, Xilio believes this additional data further validate the company's tumor-activated approach and support the broad potential for XTX202 as a combination therapy.

With this, Xilio plans to explore strategic opportunities to continue to develop XTX202 in combination with other agents.

The company has announced its plans to axe 15 jobs or around 21 percent of the total workforce as part of reprioritization process.

The move to slash staff numbers plan will incur one-time costs of $1 million and is expected to be completed in the first-half.

As part of the restructuring, the drug maker will discontinue further investment in XTX202 as a monotherapy and focus on rapidly advancing clinical development for XTX301 and XTX101.

XLO was trading up by 212.9577 percent at $1.990 in the pre-market trade on the Nasdaq.