6 October 2015 - - US-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company Mirna Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MIRN) has its initial public offering of 6.25m shares of common stock at a public offering price of USD 7.00 per share, the company said. The gross proceeds from the IPO were approximately USD 43.8m, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses. Mirna also announced the closing on 5 October 2015 of its concurrent private placement of 2,395,010 shares of common stock at a price of USD 7.00 per share with the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, or CPRIT, for estimated gross proceeds of an additional approximately USD 16.8m. Citigroup and Leerink Partners acted as joint book-running managers for the offering. Oppenheimer and Co. and Cantor Fitzgerald and Co. were co-managers. Mirna is developing a pipeline of microRNA-based oncology therapeutics and is the first to establish clinical proof-of-concept for a microRNA replacement therapy for cancer. The company's lead product candidate, MRX34, a mimic of naturally occurring microRNA-34 (miR-34), is currently being studied in a Phase 1 clinical trial in patients with primary liver cancer, advanced solid tumors and hematological malignancies. MiR-34 is one of the most widely published microRNAs and is considered a key regulator of multiple oncogenes across key oncogenic pathways, with the capacity to regulate more than 30 different oncogenes and repress the immune checkpoint signaling molecule PD-L1. Mirna said that thepotential capacity to simultaneously affect multiple pathways and processes that are critical to cancer cell viability may make mimics of tumor suppressor microRNAs potent anti-cancer agents and less susceptible to drug resistance. The company plans to develop MRX34 as a monotherapy and in combination with other therapeutic modalities, such as targeted therapies and immuno-oncology agents. Mirna was founded in 2007 and is located in Austin, Texas.