Athenex CEO Johnson Y. N. Lau, center, speaks with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Assemblyman Sean Ryan during a construction tour of the new Athenex facility at Conventus in 2016. Also shown is Flint D. Besecker, left, who was then Athenex COO and CFO. Besecker has since left the company. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News)

The Buffalo biotech company Athenex is seeking to raise $100 million in an initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange to help pay for its work to develop potential cancer drugs.

The company reported in an S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it needs additional financing to fund future operations, including completing the development and commercialization of its potential cancer drugs. It also needs more funding to conduct additional clinical trials for the approval of the drugs by the Food and Drug Administration.

Some Athenex drugs – including its Orascovery platform – deliver chemotherapy orally, a departure from intravenously injecting drugs, while its Src kinase inhibition research shows promise as another biochemical mechanism to fight cancer. To move forward, the company said it must successfully develop oral formulations and ensure they can be delivered safely and consistently in capsule form .

The ability to orally deliver chemotherapy, such as paclitaxel, could offer significant benefits to patient outcomes by allowing them to stay on therapy longer and combine it with other treatments, the company noted in the filing.

“We believe that making paclitaxel or other cytotoxic drugs more tolerable will increase the dosage patients can take over time and, thereby, increase the efficacy of the drug,” company officials said in the filing.

The company has two drug candidates in Phase 3 trials, meaning the treatments have worked well in previous smaller studies.

Athenex’s work extends beyond potential cancer treatments. It has also diversified into drug testing and manufacturing under contract to other companies.

“That’s something that people are missing about Athenex. It is a multi-platform business, and that has…