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Health & Biotech
Sunlight is meant to be the best disinfectant, but lesser known is the power of light and oxygen to kill cancer cells.
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) sounds like a new-age remedy, but in reality it is an accepted cancer treatment that has spawned several approved drugs.
PDT was invented by Danish physiologist Prof Niels Finsen way back in 1903 – and he even won a Nobel Prize for his efforts. In 1995, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a PDT drug for oesophageal cancer.
The only ASX-listed exponent of the art, Invion (ASX:IVX) hasn’t made any attention-grabbing announcements over the past few years because it’s been doing the dull-but-important stuff such as safety and toxicology studies.
“We could have made more announcements for announcements’ sake, but what’s the point if it’s not … relevant to investors?” says executive chairman Thian Chew.
That changed in September when the company unveiled first-in-human trial results for prostate cancer.
Developed by Melbourne businessman Michael Cho’s RMW Cho Group, Invion’s Photosoft platform overcomes the problems of the old PTD tech and is being applied to multiple diseases including rare ano-genital cancers.
The prostate cancer trial of Invion’s drug candidate INV-403 was ‘investigator led’, carried out by Melbourne’s National Institute of Integrative Medicine and funded by RMW Cho Group (Invion’s 9 per cent shareholder).
Chew says results from the 16 assessable patients – those with detectable levels of the biomarker prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) – were “excellent”.
While all patients were PSMA positive beforehand, seven were negative after three months of treatment.
Of the 10 patients who could be compared with before-and-after positron emission tomography (PET) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, four showed a tumour reduction of at least 30%. In one case, the tumours cleaned up entirely.
Off its own bat, meanwhile, Invion has launched a phase I-II trial for non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC), aptly in sun-bathed Brisbane.
The company has begun screening the first patients for the adaptive trial, which means the requite numbers can be as low as 18 or as high as 174 (depending on the dosing regimen).
NMSC accounts for 98% of all skin cancers, with the global treatment market forecast to be worth US$21 billion by 2032.
There’s already an approved PDT therapy for NMSC – Galderma’s Metvix – but Invion says its therapy will involve less pain and better aesthetics (less scarring).
At Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, preclinical mice work on anal squamous cell carcinomas produced what investigator Prof Rob Ramsay dubbed “exceptional” and “consistent” results.
Invion highlights the impact of using INV-043 in combination with checkpoint inhibitors – which are great when they work but they only do so 12% of the time.
“In combination, the response rate increased to 80% and Peter Mac are very excited about that,” Chew says.
Invion has accords with two separate South Korean companies for proof-of-concept work in glioblastomas. In both cases the partner funds the trial while Invion retains the right to the tech.
“We’ll just see how the results go and if [the partners] like it, we do a deal,” Chew says.
Before anyone can get too excited about Invion’s clinical work, a corporate clean-up is in order.
One measure is a proposed one-for-100 share consolidation to elevate the company from ‘penny dreadful’ territory.
Subject to approval at the company’s November 14 AGM, this would reduce Invion’s current 6.76 billion shares on issue to a more respectable 67.6 million (one share for every hundred held).
Given Invion had a scant $784,000 in the bank, funding remains an issue.
The company is owed $4.065 million by RMO Cho for reimbursement of R&D costs, but the amount is classed as a bad and doubtful debt owing to “significant delays” in receiving these funds.
A deal with New York investment bank The Lind Partners delivers between $2.4 million to $6.8 million, by way of minimum share placements of $100,000 a month.
While that’s enough to keep the lights on and fund a modest version of the skin cancer trial, Chew says a capital raising would enable flexible such as higher patient enrolment in the skin cancer trial.
Chew says that by striving to take control of its destiny, Invion can exploit opportunities, including combining INV-043 with blockbuster checkpoint inhibitor drugs such as Merck’s Keytruda.
These drugs now have a short patent life, which means big pharma faces an imminent revenue cliff.
“This is a chance for them to work with us to improve their patent life and their cash flow,” Chew says.
Chew says because INV-043 can treat multiple cancers with the same small molecule, costs should be “dramatically lower” than cell therapies such as Car-T or personalised medicine.
Given the median price of a new FDA-approved drug topped US$300,000 in the US in 2023, non-reimbursed treatments are inaccessible to all but the wealthy.
“We have something that is much more cost effective, so instead of servicing the top two per cent of the US population we have something that is much more affordable,” Chew says.
With a background in finance including at Goldman Sachs, Chew knows enough about markets to understand why Invion is valued at a lowly $6.5 million.
One is that many of Invion’s shareholders are remnants from Invion’s back door-listed via Cbio, which had an unrelated remit of curing lupus.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
In 2010 Cbio changed its name to Invion and pursued a smoking cessation aid before, er, quitting.
“They are legacy shareholders who don’t know what we do,” Chew says. “We need to get a shareholder base that is more interested in what we are doing.”
Health & Biotech
Health & Biotech
Health & Biotech
