NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Canadian blood-based biomarker development company GeneNews today reported a sharp drop in revenues and a 53 percent rise in its net loss for the first quarter of 2008.
The company reported Q1 revenues of CDN$294,286 ($288,827USD), a drop of 82.4 percent from revenues of CDN$1.7 million in the first quarter of 2007.
GeneNews’s first quarter revenue came from an ongoing US$2 million collaboration with an Asian biomedical consortium to test prostate disease biomarkers. Its 2007 Q1 revenue came from a collaboration with Pfizer.
The company posted a net loss of CDN$2.6 million, or CDN$0.05 per share, versus a loss of CDN$1.7 million, or CDN$.03 per share, in last year’s first quarter.
Its total operating expenditures decreased over the same period last year — from CDN$3.5 million in Q1 of 2007 to CDN$2.9 million in Q1 of 2008. Its R&D spending fell to CDN$2.2 million from CDN$2.7 million in Q1 of 2007, while its general and administrative costs were also down slightly at CDN$512,560 compared to CDN$593,819 last year.
The company finished the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of CDN$9.1 million. Based on this figure, GeneNews believes it has sufficient resources to continue into Q2 of 2009.
GeneNews President and CEO K. Wayne Marshall said the company is on track to commercialize a laboratory-based risk stratification test for colorectal cancer by the third quarter of 2008, which will be offered by the GeneNews clinical reference lab north of Toronto, Canada.