Annual results in line with forecasts at North West drugs discovery business
North West drugs discovery business, Evgen Pharma, said its year has ended in line with expectations, having published its results for the period to March 31, 2022, today.
When it reported its interim results last December, it said it was aiming for a successful second half of the year. Today’s figures show no revenues were booked for the full year, compared with £194,000 in 2021, but it managed to slightly reduce its pre-tax losses to £3.169m, compared with £3.213m the previous year.
Cash and short-term deposits, at March 31, stood at £9m, compared with £11.6m a year ago. Cash outflow was £2.6m, down from £2.9m the previous year. The group said it is funded to the fourth quarter of 2023
Evgen, which is a clinical stage drug development company developing sulforaphane-based medicines for the treatment of multiple diseases, has operations in both Wilmslow and Liverpool and is based at Alderley Park, Cheshire.
It cautions that it has a limited operating history, and has incurred significant losses since its inception and does not have any approved or revenue generating products. It expects to incur losses for the foreseeable future, and says there is no certainty that the business will generate a profit.
During the reporting period Evgen continued with work to support metastatic breast cancer patients who have become resistant to the widely used class of CDK4/6 inhibitor drugs.
It achieved positive preclinical data from two independent groups of collaborators, in Italy and New Zealand, as well as “encouraging early in vitro data” for its SFX-01 in juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia at the MRC Weatherall Institute, University of Oxford.
A US market launch of a JuvLife nutritional health product is anticipated around the end of 2023.
The business also highlighted a new formulation of SFX-01 generated in tablet form enabling scale-up to supply late-stage clinical trials and commercial use.
And the company appointed Dr Helen Kuhlman and Dr Glen Clack as chief business officer and chief medical officer respectively, completing its senior management team.
Looking ahead, it intends to start a healthy volunteer trial in the fourth quarter of this year with a new SFX-01 formulation and it has new academic collaborations with La Sapienza University, Rome in SFX-01 radiosensitisation and Michigan University in colon cancer.
Chief executive, Dr Huw Jones, said: “Our focus during the year has been on achieving the objectives set at our 2021 fundraise, particularly around manufacturing, formulation and clinical trials preparation.
“With this groundwork now complete, we are pleased to have achieved very visible progress in each of our development programmes and we are anticipating another busy year which will include clinical data from both the Phase I/Ib volunteer and Phase Ib/IIa glioblastoma trials.”
In March last year the business completed a successful cash raise of £11m through a heavily oversubscribed placing of 137m new ordinary shares at a price of 8p each.
It said the proceeds would be used to fund further progress on cancer treatments and the two key senior hires.
