NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – UK-based liquid biopsy technology firm Angle announced today that it plans to raise £10.2 million ($15 million) through a placement of some 15.8 million new ordinary shares at 64.50 pence per share.
Angle said it will use the net proceeds to conduct clinical studies to demonstrate the utility of its Parsortix microfluidic CTC isolation system in ovarian, prostate, and breast cancer. In a statement, the firms said it believes the placement will enable it to build on the growing body of third party evidence for the performance of Parsortix for non-invasive molecular analysis of breast and prostate cancers, and early detection of ovarian cancer in high-risk patients.
The funding could also support a bid for approval or clearance of Parsortix by the US Food and Drug Administration, Angle said.
The company further plans to invest funds in its sales and marketing and R&D efforts, and to partner with key leaders in the cancer diagnostics field to conduct research projects.
In that vein, Angle also announced today that it has signed an agreement with the University of Manchester through the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute to make Parsortix available to Manchester's clinical and experimental pharmacology group for routine use in clinical trials and research.
"Having worked on the development of the Parsortix system over the last four years, we are now delighted to be incorporating [it] into our laboratory for routine use as an epitope-independent CTC harvesting system applied to clinical samples," Ged Brady, deputy and genomics leader of the pharmacology group, said in the statement. "Results so far are encouraging and our ambition is to evaluate the output from Parsortix sample harvesting to establish data that can be used to benefit cancer patients."
According to Angle, the Manchester researchers are already using Parsortix in 10 clinical trials with four more planned.
"This contract meets a key milestone for Angle to get the Parsortix system adopted in routine use for clinical trials … This will not only generate ongoing revenues for the company but also act as a key reference for other clinical trial customers," Angle Founder and CEO Andrew Newland added.