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Alive and Kicking: Lumos Diagnostics attracts ‘Twiggy’ Forrest as cornerstone holder in $10m raise
Health & Biotech
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- Lumos Diagnostics to raise $10 million, with a little help from an iron-ore baron
- Memphasys is not horsing around as it trials its Felix sperm-separation device for the equine market
- Medical cannabis and telehealth play Vitura Health says it’s not going to pot, despite tough competition
Alive and Kicking is renowned biotech journo Tim Boreham’s new daily wrap covering morning movers and shakers of note in the ASX Healthcare sector, Monday through Thursday.
Lumos Diagnostics (ASX:LDX) is seeking to raise $10 million to support the roll-out of its mainstay product FebriDx, a finger-prick blood test that can distinguish between viral and bacterial infections within 10 minutes.
The deal also sees Tenmile Ventures, an arm of Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s private Tattarang, take a 45 million share stake, acquired via a block trade with Lumos’s founding shareholder Planet Innovations.
The terms of the non-renounceable rights offer are one share for every 1.82 shares held at 3.8 cents each, a 17.4% discount to Tuesday’s close.
The raising consists of a $4 million institutional component and a $6 million, fully underwritten retail offer.
Tenmile will emerge with a 9.3% stake, but has also committed to subscribing fully to its rights entitlement. In the wash-up, Tenmile becomes the company’s biggest holder.
Twiggy Forrest is no stranger to biotech, having invested in ASX-listed exponents including CurveBeam AI (ASX:CVB) and Emyria (ASX:EMD) , as well as the unlisted oncology house Carina Biotech.
As well as supporting general product development, the funds will be used to support a so-called Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (CLIA) study in the US.
FebriDx was approved in that market in mid-2023. But a CLIA waiver would allow health facilities to administer the test without laboratory oversight, thus increasing the addressable market 15-fold, to US$1 billion a year.
The company says that of the 122 million antibiotic prescriptions for acute respiratory complaints dispensed in the US annually, 40 percent could be unnecessary. Hence the need for a better test.
Lumos shares were unchanged at 4.6 cents this morning
Giving stallions a reproductive helping hand
Reproductive play Memphasys (ASX:MEM) expects to have its Felix sperm-selection device ready for the equine market within 12 months, targeting more than 4000 non-thoroughbred horse breeders.
The company this morning said it would undertake a three-year equine fertility study in collaboration with the University of Newcastle and EquiBreedUK Ltd as well as the local Arrowfield Stud and Vinery Stud.
Memphasys is focused primarily on human artificial insemination (AI), but the equine side is fertile indeed. Despite thoroughbred AI being outlawed the company estimates a US$681 million ($1.03 billion) a year global market, growing at 5.7% per annum.
With beasts and humans, AI can only succeed if the best sperm is selected in the first place. Most have some sort of deformity such as double heads, short tails or bent necks – or simply can’t make the long journey up the fallopian tube.
The most common sperm-separation technique – density gradient centrifugation (DGC) – can cause cell damage because of the powerful forces involved.
Another method, ‘swim-up’ – is also not ideal. As its name suggests, the ‘tadpoles’ that survive the procreative Hunger Games are deemed the fittest, but they may still be damaged.
Felix uses a gentler technique called electrophoresis, which separates molecules using electrical charge. It also takes about six minutes, compared with 30-45 minutes for the conventional methods.
Despite ejaculating 100 times more sperm than the average bloke, stallions still need a helping hand. About 3-4 million foals are born with the help of AI, the majority from IVF techniques such as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).
“ICSI, while effective, is costly and labour intensive, highlighting the need for more efficient sperm selection methods such as those offered by Felix,” the company says.
On the human side, Memphasys and Monash IVF are carrying out a trial that compares Felix with DGC and ‘swim-up’. The results are expected to support an approval application to the local Therapeutic Goods Administration.
There’s some urgency to the Memphasys quest: according to local fertility expert Professor John Aitken, sperm counts have roughly halved over the last 50 years and about 20% of men are shooting blanks.
The Felix devices are already being sold in Japan where plunging birth rates threaten social cohesion.
Memphasys shares were unchanged at 0.9c.
Vitura Health says it’s not going to pot despite stiffer competition
Cannabis and telehealth house Vitura Health (ASX:VIT) says its current-year performance is tracking ahead of budget, despite oversupply and falling margins in the medical pot sector.
In a presentation, Vitura said the medical cannabis market was experiencing “considerable price and margin competition” due to discounting and the influx of new suppliers.
Last Thursday the company reported a 5.6% revenue boost to $123.9 million, but with normalised net profit falling 75% to $4.8 million. This reflected the average gross margin on products falling 26.5%.
Vitura isn’t like your normal pot stock in that it doesn’t grow a single leaf of the devil’s lettuce. Rather, the company’s Canview platform is a market place for around 60 third-party brands, connecting patients to more than 15,000 prescribers.
Vitura is expanding its horizons to general telehealth, last October acquiring Doctors on Demand in a $25 million deal.
The gambit is a paying off, with the first eight weeks of Doctors on Demand ownership boosting consulting revenue by 874% to $15.4 million.
Vitura shares were 1.2% higher at 8 cents apiece.
At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Lumos Diagnostics is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article
