Bionomics raises $4 million for epilepsy and anxiety drug program

Adelaide biotech Bionomics’ (ASX:BNO, OTC:BMICY) successful share placement last month has raised nearly $4 million of the $6 million needed to fast-track its epilepsy and anxiety-drug discovery program, while causing minimal angst among shareholders.

Bionomics announced yesterday that its major shareholders had strongly supported the recent share placement at yesterday’s Extraordinary General Meeting.

Shareholders at the EGM passed resolutions to issue the balance of the shares and all options necessary to complete the placement, which was managed by Intersuisse Corporate.

Added to the current underwritten shareholders’ entitlements issue, the placement will raise some $6 million.

CEO Deborah Rathjen said the company was “very pleased” with the level of support for the placement among its top 20 shareholders, and with the fact that it had also brought in new institutional investors.

According to Bionomics’ chairman, Fraser Ainsworth, more than 94 per cent of proxies voted at the meeting supported the capital raising, which was essential for the epilepsy and anxiety drug discovery program.

Ainsworth said Bionomics had gone from having 17-18 months’ cash last December to support its central nervous system, cancer and angiogenesis research programs, to having funds for another two years, its targeted minimum.

Search for new epilepsy and anxiety drugs

Bionomics Limited has gone bush in its search for new drugs to treat epilepsy and anxiety, through a new agreement with Southern Cross University’s Centre for Phytochemistry and Pharmacology in Lismore.

Bionomics recently signed a similar agreement with the Walter and Eliza Hall Medical Research Institute, to screen to the Institute’s extensive library of chemical compounds.

Southern Cross University will provide the company with extracts from its growing collection of natural extracts from Australian native plants and herbal remedies from traditional pharmacopeias.

The agreement also gives Bionomics access to the Centre’s chemistry expertise. Bionomics will screen the compounds through its proprietary IonX™ drug-discovery platform.

The Centre’s director, Associate Professor David Leach, says it has been assembling a specialized herbarium of medicinal plants for primary reference, and developing libraries of extracts from each species collected.

The Centre is certified by Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration to investigate traditional herbal remedies for therapeutic compounds.

Leach says the Centre has a network of postgraduate students bioprospecting in the rainforests, sclerophyl forests and heathlands of south-eastern Queensland and north-eastern NSW, and also has contacts in the Northern Territory, with the Queensland Herbarium.

Researchers use mass spectrometry to identify compounds in plant extracts – a single specimen may yield hundreds to thousands of different compounds, of which 20 to 100 may be present at sufficient concentrations to be of interest.

“When we get a ‘hit’, we go back the collaborating institution whose researchers collected the specimen, to discuss partnerships,” he said.

Through its network of collaborating institutions, who have students working in the field, the Centre is able to reduce the high cost of field collecting – and Leach says costs are further reduced because many collectors now prefer to use helicopters to get to remote or inaccessible sites.

“Helicopters are expensive, but someone in a helicopter can collect more specimens in one day than someone in four-wheel drive could collect in a week,” he said.

The centre does not restrict its research to vascular plants – it is also looking for interesting compounds in bryophytes and fungi.