Pulse Biosciences pounds out $20m with IPO

Pulse Biosciences raised $20 million in an initial public offering this week after floating 5 million shares at $4 apiece, for a fully diluted valuation of $51 million.

Burlingame, Calif.-based Pulse is developing “nano-pulse electro-signaling,” in which extremely short-duration pulsed electrical fields are directed at solid tumors. It’s designed to induce a type of programmed cell death called immunogenic apoptosis, which can trigger the body’s immune response to find and kill other cells of the same type.

The company’s shares are slated to trade on the NASDAQ exchange under the PLSE symbol.

“We believe we are the only medical device company with the intellectual property, technology, and know-how to be able to produce this natural cell death using NPES to initiate cell signaling that induces the targeted adaptive immune response,” Pulse Biosciences said in a regulatory filing.

Other ablation technologies use extreme heat or cold, high-energy radiation or longer-pulse electrical fields to induce cellular necrosis, the company said.

“We believe NPES differs significantly as it offers a non-thermal and non-ionizing ablative technology that can be selectively tuned to induce apoptosis, reducing the potential for inflammation and collateral damage to surrounding tissue. We believe that this less destructive approach lends itself to a number of applications including tumors which would otherwise be inoperable because of proximity to critical structures,” the company said.

Pulse, formed in November 2014 via the roll-up of ThelioPulse and sister companies BioElectroMed and NanoBlate, is still in the development phase. It posted 2014 losses of $1.0 million, or 13¢ per share, according to the filing.

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