Heat Biologics announced it closed on a debt financing in the principal amount of up to $7.5 million with Square 1 Bank.

Funds from the secured term loan will be utilized for working capital and to progress the company’s clinical trials and will be made available to the company in four tranches based on the achievement of significant corporate milestones over the next 14 months. Following the closing of the loan, management expects the company’s current cash position to be extended by at least two quarters through the first quarter of 2016.

Matt Czajkowski, CFO of Heat Biologics, commented, “The closing of this important debt financing with Square 1 Bank is expected to substantially extend Heat’s cash runway. Moving forward, we remain committed to judiciously managing our resources and further identifying ways in which we can reach our key inflection points with cash on hand, including the company’s first Phase 2 data readout from our bladder cancer study.”

The term loan with Square 1 Bank is payable in four tranches. The first tranche is payable as interest-only prior to December 31, 2014 but will be extended to June 30, 2015, if the conditions for the second tranche have been met. The second tranche of the loan is payable as interest-only prior to June 30, 2015, but will be extended to October 31, 2015 if the conditions of tranche three have been met. The loan’s third tranche is payable as interest-only prior to October 31, 2015. Lastly, both principal and interest on the tranche four loan are payable in the month following the making of the loan.

Heat Biologics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing its novel, off-the-shelf ImPACT therapeutic vaccines to combat a wide range of cancers.