GG Gums,
Timescales to the intended 'offer for sale' of the company have lengthened recently.
Following Scancell's funding round which included a £4.5 million injection from Calculus Capital and a successful £2 million Open Offer to shareholders there will be an extension of their lead vaccine's clinical trial. They will also progress their new vaccine platform Moditope with these extra funds.
The directors intend to sell the company on conclusion of the Phase I/II trial of their skin cancer vaccine SCIB1. The final part of this trial (Part 2) is due to conclude this December which was the expected period when the company would be offered for sale. But because of remarkable results in Part 1 which included 100% shrinking of tumors the directors have decided they would get a much higher price for the company if they could set up an additional mini-trial in patients with extensive secondary tumors in order to showcase this capability to shrink and eliminate tumors. At the moment no manufacturer of authorized therapeutic cancer vaccines can do this.
So far, only one type of therapeutic cancer vaccine has been approved by the FDA, the dendritic cell vaccine; this is the same type of cancer vaccine that Scancell produces. But until Scancell's SCIB1, dendritic cell vaccines have been unable to provide examples of eliminating tumors completely. Dendreon's Provenge for prostate cancer, for example, has never been able to shrink tumors. Northwest Biotherapeutics has openly admitted it can't shrink tumors and the only dendritic cell vaccine manufacturer that has shrunk tumors, Celldex, has only done so so by 21% compared with Scancell's 100%. This was felt by Scancell to be such an important feature of their vaccine that they will now extend this extra tumor trial by a further 10 patients. This could add a year to eighteen months to their schedule to offer up the company for sale.
But, generally that's not how companies get sold anyway. Big Pharma is on a buying spree at the moment, as its patents are running low and they are looking to plug the gap. Citigroup estimate that the market for Immunotherapy treatments could be worth an astonishing $35 billion a year over the next 10 years. So Scancell remains squarely in the bull's eye as an acquisition target for the industry.
