Prescient Seeing Into The Future

Prescient could end 2015 with five active clinical trials investigating drugs with the potential to bring better outcomes for cancer patients around the world.

In its former incarnation as Virax Holdings, Prescient Therapeutics (PTX) gave its shareholders the full gamut of experiences on the roller-coaster ride of biotech investment, ranging from a 60% fall in share price February 2003, on the announcement that a proposed HIV vaccine did not elicit an immune response, to a 90% increase in 2009 following a licensing deal.

The company eventually went into voluntary administration, but was reconstructed and recapitalised in May 2014, through a $3 million private placement. Since then Virax has changed its name to Prescient Therapeutics, tidied up its shares on issue through a one-for-20 share consolidation, and acquired two promising cancer compounds, both of which target the processes that allow tumours to survive and grow. Prescient could end 2015 with five active clinical trials investigating drugs with the potential to bring better outcomes for cancer patients around the world.

The $3 million raised in May allowed Prescient to buy Pathway Oncology, and its first-in-class anti-cancer drug GGTI 2418, in June 2014, for $500,000 (in shares). GGTI-2418 – now known as PTX-100 – came out of research at Yale University, which is now a large shareholder in Prescient. PTX holds an exclusive worldwide licence from Yale University for PTX-100 for the treatment of multiple myeloma, breast and pancreatic cancer.

Pre-clinical data has shown that PTX-100 can work in situations where tumours have become resistant to front-line chemotherapy drugs: breaking through that cellular resistance can allow the frontline drug to reinstate its ability to destroy tumour cells. Prescient expects to begin Phase 1b trials of PTX-100 in the first half of this year: a trial on multiple myeloma will be conducted at the Lee Moffitt Cancer Centre in Tampa, Florida, while a trial on breast cancer Phase 1b trial is being run at the Montefiore Centre in New York.

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