Curasight: Management remains confident on its strategy as new financing plan is launched
Curasight’s share price was up 7 percent on Wednesday after Curasight participated in an event with HCA Capital on Tuesday June 25th. At the event Curasight was represented by CEO Ulrich Krasilnikoff and CSO Andreas Kjær who gave an update on the company’s strategy following the launch of an alternative financing plan earlier this month after a rights issue was cancelled back in March. The new plan which will potentially add up to DKK 120 million and consists of a directed issue, a loan facility and two warrant programs to be exercised in December 2024 and June 2025. While the full potential amount is high, uncertainty remains about the two warrant programs that the company hope will add a total of DKK 92 million or almost 80 percent of the total proceeds.
Despite this uncertainty, management remained confident that they will be able to continue their plans to begin an accelerated development in a basket trial setup of its Theranostic technology platform combining the two product candidates uTRACE and uTREAT for the diagnose and treatment of 5 types of cancer. However, Curasight also described their ambition to bring uTREAT into human testing (clinical phase) for a single indication already in the second quarter 2025 because this would increase the likelihood of partnerships markedly. Additionally, Curasight has recently announced the enrollment of the first patient to its phase 2 study of uTRACE for prostate cancer with partner Curium. Besides the receipt of milestones from Curium, it illustrates that Curasight continues to expand its medical development on a broader scale and diversify general development risk.
At the event CSO Andreas Kjær predicted how injectable radionuclide therapy - like uTREAT from Curasight - will most likely completely replace external radiation therapy within the next 10-15 years as it is more effective and less harmful to patients. He referred to recent acquisitions by Big Pharma companies like Roche, Eli Lilly and BMS joining Novartis to get exposure to the field of radionuclide therapy. Asked about the result from the completed investigator-initiated phase 2 study of uTRACE for breast cancer, CSO Andreas Kjær, explained that the result are yet to be published as they have been submitted to scientific journals, but ‘high-level’ results can be seen at EU registration authorities which show that 94 percent of patients tumors reacted to uTRACE. A very promising result according to CSO Andreas Kjær. As far as the timeline for uTRACE for prostate cancer, Curasight expect to submit an application for approval in 2026 and hopefully receive the approval in 2027. The timeline for the single indication for uTREAT depends on the type of a potential partner as some will be able to accelerate the development by opening many trial sites simultaneously.
The general confident and positive tone from management at the event undoubtably fueling speculation that an announcement of a new partnership could be eminent in which case up front milestones could potentially bridge Curasight’s financing needs. Also, a partnership announcement would most likely add support to the share price thereby increase the likelihood that the warrant programs will be exercised.
You can see the whole event here: Curasight interview
Disclaimer: HC Andersen Capital receives payment from Curasight for a Digital IR/Corporate Visibility subscription agreement. /Claus Thestrup 08:30 AM 27-06-2024.
Curasight is a Danish biotech company focusing on developing and improving the detection and treatment of cancer in a more gentle and efficient way. The company has two pipeline products that both use radionuclide (nuclear medicine) to facilitate better diagnosis and treatment of various cancer types; uTRACE use the so-called uPAR as a biomarker to diagnose the aggressiveness of cancer, and uTREAT use the uPAR as a attachment to treat the cancer. Based on good phase 2 data that has already been collected or will be in the first half of 2022, Curasight is expected to prepare phase 3 for uTRACE later in 2022 and 2023 for the following four cancer types: prostate, brain, neuroendocrine, and head and neck cancer.
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