Pharminox Ltd - Completes £2m funding round; appoints Alan Miller as Non-executive Director
30 Jun 2008
Pharminox Limited, ("Pharminox" or "the Company") the private UK oncology R&D company, today announced that it has successfully completed a new round of equity funding, raising just over £2 million from new and existing investors. The proceeds of the funding will be used to progress the Company’s portfolio of novel small molecule cancer therapeutics.
The Company also announced that following the fundraising, Mr Alan Miller, former Chief Investment Officer of New Star Asset Management, has joined the Pharminox Board as a Non-executive Director.
Commenting on today’s announcements, Peter Worrall, Chief Executive of Pharminox, said, “The new funds will be used primarily to advance the lead candidates from our telomere targeting and redox homeostasis modulator programmes into full preclinical development, and I am very grateful to our shareholders for their continued support. I am also delighted to welcome Alan Miller to the Board. Alan brings a wealth of investment and financial experience, which will be invaluable as the Company moves to the next stage in its development.”
Enquiries:
Pharminox
Peter Worrall, Chief Executive
Tel: +44 (0)1428 645416 / +44 (0)7887 682669
Citigate Dewe Rogerson
Mark Swallow PhD
Tel: +44 (0)20 7282 2948 / +44 (0)7903 737703
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Pharminox Ltd
Pharminox (www.pharminox.com) is an emerging UK biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of small molecule drugs for the treatment of cancer. It was formed in late 2001 as a spin-out from Oxford University with backing from IP Group plc, but has subsequently moved its discovery research activities to the BioCity biotechnology incubator in Nottingham. It owns or has acquired the rights to a number of novel programmes from the Cancer Research UK (CR-UK)-funded laboratories of Professor Malcolm Stevens OBE, formerly Director of CR-UK’s Experimental Cancer Chemotherapy Group, who joined Pharminox in 2004 as Chief Scientific Officer.
Malcolm Stevens has had a long and distinguished career in cancer research. He was responsible for the discovery and early development of temozolomide (Temodal™ / Temodar™), the current gold standard for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme, a common form of brain cancer. Temozolomide is now marketed globally by Schering-Plough and in 2007 achieved sales in excess of $850 million.
The Pharminox portfolio includes:
Phortress – a DNA-damaging agent with a novel mechanism of action that is currently in a Phase I clinical trial sponsored and conducted by CR-UK;
RHPS4 – the lead candidate from a programme focused on compounds that act by disrupting the function of the telomere, leading to cell death;
PMX 2058 – the lead candidate from a programme focused on compounds that modulate intracellular redox homeostasis by inhibition of thioredoxin.
In addition, the Company has a research collaboration with the Schering-Plough Research Institute to discover novel small molecule DNA-interactive agents. Schering-Plough has an option to license worldwide development and commercialisation rights to compounds arising from the research collaboration in return for milestone payments and future royalties.
