Biomira exercises rights in Prima
Monday, 18 July, 2005
Canadian-based cancer vaccine company Biomira has exercised its put option to take up equity in Prima Biomed (ASX:PRR) by swapping its 10 per cent equity in Prima's subsidiary company CancerVac for approximately 1.62 per cent equity in Prima.
By converting its equity in CancerVac into ordinary shares, Biomira relinquished 10 per cent of its shares in CancerVac so that Prima now owns 86.55 per cent of the subsidiary.
"We met with [Biomira] a month ago, and we talked about the future and various strategic initiatives, and they've decided that it's better to participate in an obviously undervalued asset," said Prima's executive chairman Eugene Kopp.
Prima and Biomira are currently collaborating to develop an immunotherapy for cancer. Prima acquired a world wide exclusive licence from Biomira for the tumour antigen mucin 1 (MUC-1) in ex vivo cancer immunotherapy.
"In coming up with the negotiation with Biomira over a year ago we have taken on their technology... we didn't pay them anything, they decided to give it exclusively to us, so we can conduct a phase II trial," said Kopp.
CancerVac's immunotherapy works by teaching the immune system to recognise the tumour cells as foreign. Dendritic cells are removed from the patient and stimulated with mannan fusion protein (MFP), consisting of the antigenic portion of MUC-1 fused to the immune-enhancing sugar mannan. The cells are then reinfused back into the patient to generate primarily a T-cell-based immune response against the MUC-1-expressing tumour.
As part of licensing arrangements entered into over a year ago, Biomira has commercialisation rights over this technology.
"Under the agreement [Biomira] has a right to exercise the licensing for worldwide rights, except for New Zealand and Australia. They may do so on an interim basis, probably six months from now, or they can do it at the end of the trial," said Kopp.
Recruitment is currently being finalised for CancerVac's phase IIa ovarian cancer trial and is expected to be completed shortly.
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