ANGLE (LON:AGL) is to raise up to £8.8mln through a placing and offer to investigate applications of its Parsortix cancer cell filter in ovarian cancer.
The company has also signed a collaboration agreement with Texas University’s MD Anderson Center to investigate Parsortix’s use in colorectal cancer.
ANGLE will raise £7.3mln through a placing at 65p per share and up to a further £1.5mln through an offer to existing shareholders.
The money will follow up an encouraging recent study on Parsortix’s ability to catch circulating ovarian cancer cells by the Medical University of Vienna.
It will also help develop ANGLE’s relationships with hospitals such as MD Anderson and increase sales to other research centres, said the company.
MD Anderson's Clinical Center for Targeted Therapy has the largest programme in the world aimed at the development of new cancer drugs.
The centre will recruit 50 metastatic colorectal cancer patients for a patient study, which is expected to report by the end of the year.
Blood will be collected from each patient and processed using ANGLE's Parsortix system.
The harvested circulating tumour cells (CTCs) will be distributed to three different MD Anderson labs in pursuit of three key objectives; these are:
• Investigation of the key markers of the CTCs and is use alongside Merck Serono's approved drug Erbitux;
• how CTCs are involved in the process of metastasis, which may provide important clinical information on the process of metastasis leading to secondary cancers;
• and the potential to culture colorectal cancer CTCs harvested by the Parsortix system.
Andrew Newland, ANGLE’s chief executive, said: “In our announcement on 27 January 2015, we stated that we would be focusing our resources to deliver the ovarian cancer opportunity as quickly as possible.
“We are delighted that investors share our view of this opportunity and we have been able to secure the funding so quickly.
“The company is now fully-funded to deliver a clinical application addressing a very strong medical need in ovarian cancer in a market that we estimate may be worth £300 million per annum.”
Newland added that money raised, which came from 13 institutions and was three times oversubscribed, would fund its share of a major clinical trial for Parsortix in ovarian cancer sufferers to be run by Medical University of Vienna.
The trial will run for 12 months after six months to set up, and Newland is hoping sales afterwards will be sufficient for it to become cash generative.
MD Anderson, meanwhile, will carry out the trial into colorectal cancer.
ANGLE has supplied it with two Parsortix systems, which in itself opens up a potentially sizeable market as the university’s numerous cancer programmes alone would account for two years of sales.
Erbitux in the starting point, but the potential to cultivate cancer cells outside a patient’s body is ground breaking work said Newland.
In addition, results from a breast cancer study currently underway at the University of Southern California due in the middle of the year while a multinational pharma company is currently testing the use of Parsortix as the pre-filter part of its single cell analysis system.
Shares were trading at 74p today.