Agenix CEO Home resigns

Donald Home has resigned as CEO and managing director of Brisbane-based Agenix (ASX:AGX, NASDAQ:OTC:AGXLY) after four and a half years with the company.

The company's finance director, Neil Leggett, will replace Home, effective immediately. Leggett has been with Agenix for two and a half years.

Home will continue working for Agenix as an advisor on ThromboView, the company's blood clot imaging product program.

"Don was instrumental in achieving some key objectives," said Leggett. "He secured some intellectual property in the in vitro diagnostic area, he improved the infrastructure and he invested in our quality systems to bring them up to an international level and he also led the development of ThromboView to the point where we are on the verge of negotiating a sales, marketing and distribution agreement."

Agenix' share price has fallen steadily from a high of around $0.90 in April 2004 to $0.24 at the time of writing, a decrease of more than 70 per cent.

"Our share price is currently at the lowest level for a number of years, and I think the pressing issue that we have in the market place is to start getting some momentum back in the share price," said Leggett.

A difficulty faced by Agenix, said Leggett, is that the company is conducting a phase II clinical trial under an IND with the US FDA and "there are restrictions about what you can actually say."

"Unfortunately when you're basically a one-product company and you're restricted about what you can say about that one product, news flow tends to dry up," said Leggett. "Shareholders tend to react to lack of news flow. It doesn't give them a reason to buy our stock."

Agenix is close to reaching its recruitment targets for an interim analysis of 50 evaluable patients for its phase II deep vein thrombosis trial in the US and Canada, said Leggett. "We were also attempting to recruit patients for our phase Ib PE [pulmonary embolism] trial in Australia and that's very close to finishing," he said.

Leggett said Agenix' number one priority would be to conclude a ThromboView deal. "We're moving forward very aggressively to try and conclude a sales marketing and distribution agreement with ThromboView," he said.

The company will also be looking at its medical diagnostic businesses to "determine whether there are opportunities for those businesses to grow," said Leggett.

Home was not available for comment today. Asked why Home resigned, Leggett said that had had "stepped down to do other things".

"He's still going to be involved with us to a degree in relation to the ThromboView program," said Leggett. "He's certainly going to be working with us over the next few months on a periodic basis to keep help moving that program forward. He's not going to be entirely absent."

However, Bioshares analyst Mark Pachacz said he suspected Home's parting with Agenix may have reflected "management style" issues. "The board has probably been concerned about the share price. But I don't think the blame can solely be put on just the CEO -- I think the board has to accept some responsibility for what's gone on."

Pachacz said Agenix had had a difficult time in the last 18 months, since the collapse of merger talks with Peptech (ASX:PTD).

"I think Don has done an excellent job in commercialising this technology," Pachacz said. "Unfortunately I would say he hasn't been able to communicate that well enough with investors, and that has been reflected in the company's share price.

"But we rate ThromboView very highly -- we give it a very high probability that it will reach the market, and the company will commercialise that successfully through collaboration with one of the major imaging groups," he said.

Pachacz said that replacing Home with "someone who doesn't have very much industry experience" raised some concerns about Agenix's direction. "We're disappointed with this development in the company, and it increases the risk to investors, he said.