Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals (HEMO) , a biopharma company developing therapies and treatments for blood diseases, announced that investment firm Prevail Partners has bought a stake at a premium of 240% to the company's closing share price on 14 September 2023.
Prevail agreed to invest in the company through a subscription for 11,066,667 ordinary shares at a price of US$0.075 per share - approximately £0.06 - for a total sum of $830,000.
In the same statement, Hemogenyx said it had signed a Master Service and Technology Agreement with Prevail InfoWorks to act as Contract Research Organization for its upcoming Phase I clinical study, which is expected to commence in 2023.
The company's upcoming Phase I study is of its anti-FLT3 chimeric antigen receptor-redirected T cells in subjects with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
The subscription funds will in large part defray the payment made by the Company for the first stage of the work being undertaken by InfoWorks under the MSTA.
Dr Vladislav Sandler, CEO & Co-Founder of Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals, commented: "As we seek to bring the curative power of cell therapies to a greater number of patients suffering from otherwise incurable life-threatening diseases, we are very confident in Prevail InfoWorks' ability to coordinate our Phase I clinical trial in relapsed/refractory AML. Their operational experience and expertise will enable a smooth execution of the study, while their specialization in real-time data integration and analytics will ensure fast, reliable data access to lower our clinical risk and potentially speed up our regulatory timeline.
Prevail Partners' strategic investment in the Company demonstrates their confidence in our CAR-T program and in our ability to execute the upcoming clinical study."
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The upcoming Phase I study will explore CAR-T cell treatments for subjects with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) which is a type of blood and bone marrow cancer. Blood cancers affect over 1.1 million people in the US annually.
Currently, the most common treatment path is a BM/HSC transplant, but this comes with a string of disadvantages, including a high failure rate, with up to 50% of BM/HSC transplants failing due to the body’s rejection of the transplant and complications from the procedure or a relapse of the disease. On top of this, there is a shortage of BM/HSC donors, with 60% of donors unable to find a match.
Hemogenyx’s solution involves CAR-T therapy, a treatment in which a patient's own T-cells, a type of immune cell, are modified to recognise and kill the patient's cancer cells. If successful, this therapy would have a major impact on treatment and survival rates of blood cancers.
Hemogenyx shares had risen 27% at time of writing.
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