Austin-based Aeglea BioTherapeutics Goes Public and Raises $50 Million

Aeglea BioTherapeutics went public on the NASDAQ Stock Market Thursday at $10 a share with an Initial Public Offering bringing in $50 million.

Shares in the biotechnology company, which develops enzyme-based therapeutics in the field of amino acid metabolism to treat inborn errors of metabolism and cancer, closed down two percent at $9.77 a share.

Aeglea originally filed papers with the Securities Exchange Commission last June for an Initial Public Offering to raise $86.2 million.

The company plans to use the proceeds from the stock sale to fund the continuing development of its AEB1102 cancer fighting drug and to fund other drugs as well as for working capital, according to its registration statement filed with the SEC. The company recently began Phase One clinical trials of the AEB1102 drug in seven patients.

Aeglea licenses research from the University of Texas at Austin. It licenses the research work of UT Professor Dr. George Georgiou “on the engineering, optimization and initial animal validation of human enzymes to determine the systemic depletion of amino acids for cancer therapy and analyze enzyme replacement for the treatment of patients having inborn metabolic defects,” according to its registration statement.