Redx Pharma Plc (LON:REDX) has unveiled plans to raise up to £14.9mln that will be used to develop two promising pre-clinical drug candidates.
The bulk of the money will come from a £12mln placing of stock with professional investors.
As part of that institutional round finance house Lanstead Capital is subscribing for shares worth around £4.3mln and will feed back the majority of the proceeds in monthly instalments.
Funds will also come from a smaller open offer tranche that allows existing investors to acquire equity on the same terms as the big City investors.
The shares are being sold for 37.5p each, which is a less than 10% discount to Wednesday’s closing price.
The new cash injection will allow the company to push its highly promising cancer immunotherapy drug through early clinical studies to assess its safety.
Called a Porcupine inhibitor it works by targeting cancer stems cells that can often lie dormant after traditional treatment and are associated with a recurrence of the illness.
Kill the stem cells and you have a chance of eradicating the disease completely.
Novartis currently is the only drug major with a Porcupine inhibitor in the clinic.
The funds will also be used to carry out work that will make its Bruton's tyrosine kinase inhibitor “clinic-ready”.
The Redx leukaemia treatment is being developed as a second-generation of compound with fewer side-effects than the market leader Imbruvica (often referred to as Ibrutinib).
Importantly, the company’s drug is targeted at overcoming resistance that patients have developed to the current gold standard drugs.