Arovella Therapeutics Ltd (ASX:ALA) has raised $4.1 million via a strongly supported placement at a price of A$0.045 per share and aims to raise an extra $1 million via a share purchase plan (SPP) under the same price as the placement.
These funds will allow the biotechnology company, which is focused on developing its invariant Natural Killer T (iNKT) cell therapy platform, to fund the development of ALA-101 towards clinical trials and to enhance Arovella’s iNKT cell pipeline.
The pricing of the placement represents a 10% discount to the last traded market price and a 12.4% discount to the volume weighted average price (VWAP) of Arovella Shares traded on the ASX over the five days up to and including June 2, 2023.
ALA received firm commitments from institutional and sophisticated investors under a placement of 91,111,111 new fully paid ordinary shares.
Coming milestones
Not only will the money go towards progressing Arovella’s lead product, ALA-101, towards a Phase 1 clinical trial for patients with CD19-positive Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It will also be used to strengthen Arovella’s iNKT cell therapy pipeline and provide general working capital.
Over the coming 18 months, this work will lead to several critical milestones, including:
- reporting initial animal data on ALA-101 in combination with Imugene’s onCARlytics (H2 CY23);
- optimising and scaling up its CAR-iNKT manufacturing process suitable for phase I clinical trials, including completing cGMP manufacture of its lentiviral vector (H2 CY23);
- completing Investigational New Drug (IND)-enabling non-clinical safety and efficacy studies (H1 CY24)
- manufacturing clinical batches for phase I clinical trials (H1 CY24);
- securing an Investigational New Drug (IND) application with the FDA and/or regulatory filing with TGA to conduct a phase I clinical trial in Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (H2 CY24); and
- commencing a phase I clinical trial in Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (H2 CY24).
“Arovella is working in one of the most important cancer therapeutic areas, cell therapies," Arovella’s chairman Dr Tom Duthy said.
"The company is well-positioned to be a leader in the iNKT cell space, which shows great promise for the generation of an off-the-shelf product.
"We are delighted with the support from investors in the placement, which provides us with funding to accelerate the development of our lead product, ALA-101 toward clinical trials."
Arovella managing director and CEO Michael Baker continued, “It has been a challenging period for the sector so to have the level of support that we received is outstanding.
"This is an exciting time for Arovella. The company has repositioned itself and we can now focus on driving ALA-101 into clinic. We look forward to building on our success and creating value for all our shareholders.”
Key dates
Settlement of the placement is expected to happen on Tuesday, June 13, 2023, with allotment to occur on Wednesday, June 14, 2023.
The SPP offer will open on Thursday, June 15, 2023, and close on Thursday, June 29, 2023.
The key dates are (indicative only):
