NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Cancer molecular diagnostics firm Epigenomics said on Thursday that it intends to launch a capital raise in January in order to fund current operations and increase its distribution capabilities.
The company intends to raise just under €5 million ($6.6 million), which would allow it to avoid having to offer a prospectus under German securities laws, it said. The planned financing would extend the cash runway of Epigenomics to at least the fourth quarter of 2013.
Details of the raise will be determined by its supervisory and executive boards early next month, including the maximum number of new shares and the subscription ratio. New shares will be offered initially to company shareholders, and remaining new shares may be then offered in a private placement to institutional investors.
The company, which is based in Berlin with its US office in Seattle, had €5.7 million in cash and cash equivalents as of Sept. 30.
The firm's flagship product is its blood-based Epi proColon colorectal cancer screening test, and recently it reported top-line results from a comparison study of its product with fecal immunochemical testing. The study demonstrated that Epi proColon is not inferior to FIT in detecting colorectal cancer, according to Epigenomics.
The company said today that it remains on track to file the final module of its premarket approval submission for the test with the US Food and Drug Administration by the end of 2012, with a decision by the agency expected in the second half of 2013.