LONDON – 13 September 2012 – PsiOxus Therapeutics, Ltd. (PsiOxus) today announced the conversion of almost £1 million ($1.5 million) of loan notes from the Wellcome Trust, a leading global charitable foundation. The loan conversion follows a Series B round of equity financing totaling £22 million ($34 million) closed in July 2012.
The loan notes derive from a Translation Award from the Wellcome Trust for the development of a systemically available oncolytic vaccine, ColoAd1, through a phase I clinical trial for the treatment of colorectal cancer. The clinical trial will be initiated later this year.
ColoAd1 is a unique therapeutic candidate developed using the evolutionary principle of natural selection to generate an oncolytic vaccine with optimal anti-cancer properties. The vaccine is injected into the bloodstream and can replicate in and destroy cancer cells but not normal cells. Each infected cell produces thousands of new copies of ColoAd1, which then spread to nearby cancer cells and destroys them as well. The approach thus represents a new generation of ‘self-amplifying’ cancer therapy that has both a direct tumor killing and cancer vaccine effect.
Commenting on the announcement, Dr Richard Seabrook, Head of Business Development at the Wellcome Trust, said, “Oncolytic vaccines represent a promising new treatment option and the Wellcome Trust is pleased to reinforce our support for further investigation of this new approach to cancer therapy.”
Dr John Beadle, CEO of PsiOxus, commented: “This continued support from the Wellcome Trust, the UK’s leading biomedical foundation, will be instrumental in taking ColoAd1 through to late stage clinical studies.”
Contacts:
PsiOxus Therapeutics
Dr John Beadle, Chief Executive Officer Tel +44 (0) 7810 770 310
John.Beadle@psioxus.com
Media Enquiries: Erik Clausen Tel +1 781-608-7091
PsiOxus@chempetitive.com
About PsiOxus Therapeutics, Ltd.
PsiOxus Therapeutics is an Oxford, UK based development stage biotechnology company using non-traditional approaches to develop novel therapeutics that address cancer and other clinically unmet diseases. ColoAd1 is an oncolytic vaccine for the systemic treatment of metastatic cancer, which has demonstrated exceptional anti-cancer properties in late pre-clinical development and will begin clinical development later in 2012. MT-102 is a dual action Anabolic Catabolic Transforming Agent (ACTA) in phase II clinical development for the treatment of cachexia and sarcopenia. The Company is also developing treatments based upon the research phase vaccine platform PolySTAR, which combines recombinant viral vectors with polymers to shield them from the immune system, and the research phase adjuvant and immunotherapeutic platform PolyMAP, which combines polymers with synthetic adjuvants to significantly enhance the effectiveness of vaccines.
Dr John Beadle is CEO of PsiOxus. Dr Beadle was previously a co-founder of PowderMed, which was sold to Pfizer, Inc. for more than $300 million in 2006. Dr Michael Moore, the former CEO of Piramed, which was acquired by Roche in 2008, serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
PsiOxus is advised by a distinguished Scientific Advisory Board including the original Hybrid founders, Prof Len Seymour (Chair of Gene Medicine at Oxford University and Secretary General of the European Society for Gene and Stem Cell Therapy) and Dr Kerry Fisher (an internationally-recognized specialist in molecular medicine, also of Oxford University); and the original Myotec scientific founders , Prof Andrew Coats (Norwich Research Park Professor-at-Large, University of East Anglia) and Prof. Stefan Anker (Professor of Cardiology and Cachexia Research at Charité Medical School, Berlin and President of the Society on Sarcopenia, Cachexia
and Wasting Diseases).
About the Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. It supports the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. The Trust’s breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. It is independent of both political and commercial interests. www.wellcome.ac.uk