7 September 2018 - - US-based investigational ribonucleic acid interference therapeutics developer Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: DRNA) has priced an underwritten registered public offering of 7,680,492 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of USD 13.02 per share.

Dicerna also granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,152,073 shares of its common stock on the same terms and conditions.

Closing of the offering is expected to occur on or about 11 September 2018, subject to customary closing conditions.

All of the shares sold in the offering are being sold by Dicerna.

The gross proceeds to Dicerna from this offering are expected to be approximately USD 100m, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and offering expenses payable by Dicerna.

Dicerna plans to use the net proceeds from this offering for preclinical studies and clinical trials, and to use the remainder of any net proceeds for continued technology platform development, working capital and general corporate purposes.

Citigroup, Leerink Partners and Stifel are acting as the joint book-running managers for the offering. H.C. Wainwright and Co. and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey are acting as the lead co-managers for the offering.

Dicerna Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of innovative, subcutaneously delivered RNAi-based therapeutics for the treatment of diseases involving the liver, including rare diseases, viral infectious diseases, chronic liver diseases, and cardiovascular diseases.

The company is leveraging its proprietary GalXC RNAi technology platform to build a broad pipeline in these core therapeutic areas, focusing on target genes where connections between target gene and diseases are well understood and documented.

Dicerna plans to discover, develop and commercialize novel therapeutics either on its own or in collaboration with pharmaceutical partners.

GalXCTM is a proprietary technology platform invented by Dicerna to discover and develop RNAi-based therapies designed to silence disease-driving genes in the liver.

Compounds produced via GalXC are intended to be broadly applicable across multiple therapeutic areas, including rare diseases, viral infectious diseases, chronic liver diseases, and cardiovascular diseases.

Using GalXC, Dicerna scientists attach N-acetylgalactosamine sugars directly to the extended region of our proprietary RNAi molecules, yielding multiple proprietary conjugate delivery configurations.

Many of the conjugates produced via GalXC incorporate a folded motif known as a tetraloop in the extended region.

The tetraloop configuration, which is unique to Dicerna's GalXC compounds, allows flexible and efficient conjugation to the targeting ligands, and stabilises the RNAi duplex which the company believes will enable subcutaneous delivery of its RNAi therapies to hepatocytes in the liver, where they are designed to specifically bind to receptors on target cells, potentially leading to internalisation and access to the RNAi machinery within the cells.

The technology may offer several distinct benefits, as suggested by strong preclinical data. The benefits seen in preclinical studies include: potency that is on par with or better than comparable platforms; highly specific binding to gene targets; long duration of action; and an infrequent subcutaneous dosing regimen.