SCANCELL'S FUNDING & OPEN OFFER TO SHAREHOLDERS
Scancell (SCLP.L) the cancer vaccine firm has just sought a round of funding via a Firm Placing to Calculus Capital and a 1 for 22 Open Offer to shareholders. This entails a modest dilution of some 13% which shareholders can offset somewhat by accepting their allocated shares priced at a heftily discounted 22.5p. The company hopes to raise £6.5 million to fund additional recruiting of a further 10 patients to part of its SCIB1 skin cancer vaccine trial and the pre-clinical and early clinical development of Scancell's newly discovered vaccine technology, Moditope. Here is an excellent post written by a Scancell shareholder on Interactive Investor's Scancell discussion board:
Yes, I have just completed my online application, I will be taking up my full allocation as well.
I support the decision to get some extra funding for 10 more patients on the 8mg cohort and the development of Moditope. 13 or so patients will be a reasonable number to see the effects of the SCIB1 vaccine on this special subset of patients. I also agree with the statement that Richard Goodfellow has made in emails that allowing Moditope to remain on the shelf without progression was not an option.
The decision itself is as a result of talks with investors over the funding of Moditope going forward. They came to the right decision. The patent exemplification period for Moditope ends in August by which time they have to include all possible applications and details of their discovery. So after that it is full steam ahead for Moditope.
What I found particularly interesting though was the update on the progress of SCIB1's dose escalation study i.e., part 1 of the Phase I/II trial. Of those 6 patients who have received working doses of the vaccine at either full or half strength (2mg or 4mg doses or a combination of the two) 4 patients or 66.6% are surviving longer than a year and one for 2 years. Now this is only a small data set from a dose escalation study principally designed to test for toxicity but it compares very favourably indeed with the best that the melanoma treatment market is currently offering.
For example, Bristol Myers Squibb's Yervoy (ipilimumab) Phase II trial produced a one year survival rate of 47% to 51% for people with stage III or IV melanoma. The gp100 peptide vaccine plus Yervoy 46% and Yervoy plus the chemotherapy drug dacarbazine 43.7%! Also Yervoy of course is extremely toxic where Scancell's SCIB1 isn't. Yervoy was recently approved by NICE for the treatment of metastatic melanoma by Britain's National Health Service.
Part 2 of the SCIB1 Phase I/II trial, designed to eradicate micro-metastases and prevent recurrence of disease in 13 patients who have had their tumours surgically removed beforehand, is on track to be completed by the end of the year.
Back to the additional 8mg (double dose) trial tagged onto part 1, which resulted from the discovery made in the early dose escalation studies that SCIB1 successfully eliminated target tumours in one patient that had not had them surgically removed beforehand. The extent of this eradication now becomes clear. All target tumours were reduced substantially up to 100% and all lung secondaries were eradicated. A remaining abdominal tumour it now transpires was unrelated to the patient's melanoma (that is it did not exhibit melanoma antigens when surgically removed) so would not have been treatable by the SCIB1 vaccine anyway. This is truly exciting. Hence Scancell seeking permission for the 8mg cohort last December on patients with their tumours still present. They have 3 now and they will recruit an extra 10. The reason why this is now so important for Scancell is that none of their cancer vaccine competitors can shrink or eliminate tumours in this way. The market leader Dendreon has never shown it can shrink tumours, Northwest Biotherapeutics readily admits it can't shrink tumours and the only dendritic cell vaccine manufacturer whose vaccine has had an impact on tumours, Celldex, has only succeeded in shrinking them 21%. This shows the superior strength of Scancell's SCIB1 vaccine over its competitors.
The board are still committed to selling the company and with this extra funding they will have sufficient resources to display their technology to full advantage and command the best price from the industry when its sold.
Shri9
