Special Report: Prescient Therapeutics has boosted its cash balance to $20.3m, leaving it well funded to research targeted personalised CAR-T cancer treatments following a successful $13.5m capital raising.

Prescient Therapeutics (ASX:PTX) has received firm commitments from professional and sophisticated investors to buy $7.05m in shares at 5.5c each, the same price as a recently completed share purchase plan that raised $6.5m.

Prescient chief executive Steven Yatomi-Clarke says the company is “delighted” by the strong response to the placement, which in part reflects excess demand from the share purchase plan.

“Both existing and new shareholders have shown that they share Prescient’s enthusiasm for its expanded pipeline of innovative cancer treatments,” he said.

The funds will be used to progress Prescient’s targeted therapies and cell therapy enhancement programs as well as being used to develop a cancer therapy platform known as OmniCAR.

CAR-T is next-generation cell therapy for treating cancer that genetically modifies the body’s white blood cells, known as T-Cells, creating hybrid cells called Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CAR) that attack and recognise cancer antigens.

CAR-T has been approved to treat several kinds of blood cancers but faces challenges that limit their broader use including safety and manufacturing issues.

Using technology licensed from the University of Pennsylvania, OmniCAR aims to solve these issues by allowing clinicians to fine-tune CAR-T cells post-infusion and even switch them off entirely via a built-in “kill switch”.

 

Backed by cancer heavyweight

Earlier in August, Prescient announced a milestone partnership with global cancer heavyweight the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre — a leader in new clinical treatments for cancer — to develop CAR-T cell therapy technologies.

The research program is being led by Professor Phil Darcy, head of cancer immunotherapy at Peter Mac’s Melbourne laboratory, and will seek to produce technologies that can complement existing CAR-T cancer treatment approaches.

Prescient is the only ASX company that is developing CAR-T programs and it will own the intellectual property rights stemming from the research program.

The research program at Peter Mac is an important addition to the Cell Therapy Enhancements (CTE) programs in Prescient’s treatments pipeline.

As exciting and groundbreaking as CAR-T is, the current generation of therapies face challenges that limit its application, including safety, cost and flexibility to treat a range of cancers.

OmniCAR is Prescient’s new platform that seeks to address these challenges – creating the next generation of CAR-T therapies that are safer, controllable and flexible.

OmniCAR aims to improve the safety profile of CAR-T and enhance dosage control and T-Cell activity by making CAR-T more flexible and adaptable to treat multiple cancers including tumours.

This article was developed in collaboration with Prescient Therapeutics, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

Read MoreHealth

Featured Companies

You might be interested in