A Wilmington area pharmaceutical company that reported a successful stock offering earlier this year got the OK from a state committee for a state Strategic Grant.
The Delaware Business Times (subscription) reported that Prelude Therapeutics Incorporated applied for $5.5 million from the Delaware Strategic Fund to expand the Wilmington area operations. The OK came from the Council on Development Finance.
Strategic grants are typically based on the company reaching employment-related benchmarks. The grants are recouped via added income tax revenues from new staff.
The company is based in the Delaware Innovation Space at the DuPont Experimental Station site. Prelude has been one of the success stories coming out of the lab and office space complex that includes the state, DuPont, and the University of Delaware as partners.
The funding was quietly approved last month, with Sussex County’s Miller Metal Fabrication and Glasgow’s Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics getting approvals for grants from the state Strategic Fund for expansion and job retention.
Early this year, Prelude had a successful stock offering for 2,583,334 shares of its voting common stock and 291,666 shares of its non-voting common stock, each at a public offering price of $60.00 per share.
Proceeds from the offering were $172.5 million before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses.
Prelude Therapeutics is a clinical-stage company developing drug candidates targeting cancer cell pathways.
Earlier this week, DarwinHealth, Inc., a New York City-based company tied to Columbia University research, announced a scientific research collaboration employing its Biomarker Enrichment Strategies for Trials platform) in connection with the development of Prelude’s drug candidates.
As of Friday, Prelude shares were trading at $16.22, well off the late 2020 price of $89 a share that came before the stock offerings.
Click here for earlier stories on Prelude.
