Scancell PLC (LON:SCLP), the cancer immunotherapy drug specialist, said it is rearranging a general meeting to get approval for the issue of £17.9mln worth of convertible loan notes to US health investor Redmile.
The loan notes were to be issued as part of a £30mln finance package from Redmile announced earlier this month.
Scancell said proxy votes in favour exceeded 70% but had not reached the 75% threshold required to pass a special resolution to issue the notes.
Votes received against these resolutions were from a very small number of shareholders, it added, but did include one of the company's larger shareholders.
A new general meeting has been convened for 5 November to give more shareholders time to vote on the resolutions and to boost the total in favour above 75%.
In its statement, Scancell said the directors were aware of a number of shareholders who have indicated that they would vote in favour of the Resolutions if more time was available.
Scancell added that the open offer to raise £3mln launched in addition to the Redmile deal had closed and was heavily oversubscribed.
Cliff Holloway, Scancell’s chief executive said: "The additional funds from the proposed New Convertible Loan Notes would allow Scancell to accelerate its development pipeline by advancing multiple programmes from its different platform technologies in parallel.
"Importantly, this would mitigate risk versus our current, more sequential approach to asset development.”
Scancell said its unaudited cash balance currently is approximately £25mln.