Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals Announces Strategic Investment from Prevail Partners, LLC
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals plc (LSE: HEMO), the biopharmaceutical group developing new therapies and treatments for blood diseases, announces that Prevail Partners, LLC (“Prevail Partners”), an investment fund, has agreed to invest in the Company through a subscription for 11,066,667 ordinary shares (the “New Ordinary Shares”) at a price of US$0.075 per share (approximately £0.06) for the total sum of $830,000 (approximately £668,000). The subscription price represents a premium of approximately 240% to the Company’s closing share price on 14 September 2023, when agreement was reached as to the final terms of the investment. The agreement governing the subscription (the “Subscription Agreement”) contains customary warranties from the Company and Prevail Partners. Following allotment, Prevail Partners will hold approximately 0.96% of the Company’s issued share capital.
The Company’s wholly owned subsidiary, Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals LLC, has also signed a Master Service and Technology Agreement (“MSTA”) with Prevail InfoWorks, Inc. (“InfoWorks”), a Philadelphia, PA based Contract Research Organization (CRO) and affiliate of Prevail Partners. Under the terms of the MSTA, InfoWorks is to provide clinical services and technologies for the Company’s upcoming Phase I study of its anti-FLT3 chimeric antigen receptor-redirected T cells (“CAR-T cells”) in subjects with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Services include clinical site coordination, project management, data management, clinical monitoring, and pharmacovigilance (safety management) services, and the use of InfoWorks’ integrated real-time data analytics platform, The Single Interface®, for clinical support and real-time data analysis. The MSTA has an initial term of 40 months, and Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals LLC has agreed an initial statement of works relating to the Phase I AML study.
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.
About AML and CAR-T Therapy
AML, the most common type of acute leukemia in adults, has poor survival rates (a five-year survival rate of less than 30% in adults) and is currently treated using chemotherapy, rather than the potentially more benign and effective form of therapy being developed by Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals. The successful development of a new therapy for AML would have a major impact on treatment and survival rates for the disease.
CAR-T therapy is a treatment in which a patient’s own T-cells, a type of immune cell, are modified to recognize and kill the patient’s cancer cells. The procedure involves: isolating T-cells from the patient; modifying the isolated T-cells in a laboratory using a CAR gene construct (which allows the cells to recognize the patient’s cancer); amplifying (growing to large numbers) the newly modified cells; and re-introducing the cells back into the patient.
