Penny stock pulls back on offering up more of its shares amid ‘current market conditions’ –

As some biotechs con­tin­ue to re­think IPOs or SPAC deals in the cur­rent mar­ket, oth­er com­pa­nies are paus­ing on sell­ing off more shares.

The Boston-based RNA biotech TransCode Ther­a­peu­tics on Tues­day an­nounced that it has with­drawn its S-1 fil­ing with the SEC that it made in late No­vem­ber. TransCode said in a brief press re­lease that the with­draw­al is re­flec­tive of TransCode’s be­lief that “cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions are not con­ducive for an of­fer­ing on terms that would be in the best in­ter­ests of the com­pa­ny’s stock­hold­ers.”

TransCode’s stock $RNAZ cur­rent­ly sits well in­to the pen­ny stock zone, where it has been sit­ting since Oc­to­ber, at $0.67 per share, and has tak­en a 77% drop since the be­gin­ning of the year. The price did rise to around 45% since open­ing Wednes­day, how­ev­er.

Ac­cord­ing to TransCode’s S-1, it was plan­ning to of­fer up to 12.5 mil­lion shares with the fund with a pos­si­ble $5.1 mil­lion go­ing its way. The funds would be used to move its lead can­di­date for­ward, more R&D for its oth­er can­di­dates and work­ing cap­i­tal.

The lead can­di­date, dubbed TTX-MC138, is cur­rent­ly in the pre­clin­i­cal stage and de­signed to treat metasta­t­ic can­cers by in­hibit­ing “mi­croR­NA-10b” to elim­i­nate the metas­ta­sis. Re­searchers hope it can work against sev­er­al can­cers in­clud­ing breast, pan­cre­at­ic and colon, among oth­ers.

TransCode first en­tered the stock mar­ket in the sum­mer of last year, pric­ing its IPO at $4 a share and of­fer­ing 6.25 mil­lion shares. How­ev­er, it was plan­ning to of­fer 2.8 mil­lion shares be­tween $8 and $10 a share.

But the news has not been the great­est for those biotech com­pa­nies try­ing to make moves on the mar­ket as con­di­tions have been rocky.

Just to­day, In­trin­sic Med­i­cine and its blank-check part­ner Phoenix Biotech Ac­qui­si­tion Corp. called off their re­verse merg­er Tues­day night, cit­ing “cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions” for the deal not go­ing for­ward. In Oc­to­ber, San­a­by Health came on­to the scene dur­ing the SPAC boom, but it couldn’t hold on in the cur­rent ecosys­tem, with San­a­by dis­solv­ing and be­ing liq­ui­dat­ed af­ter it couldn’t find a part­ner.

And last month, Eli­cio Ther­a­peu­tics se­cured $37 mil­lion of its planned $40 mil­lion Se­ries C, but the com­pa­ny had to take a step back from list­ing on Nas­daq and work with the fund­ing raise.