BioWorld International Correspondent

LONDON - The technology management company Medical Marketing International (MMI) Group plc raised £10 million (US$17.5 million) in a rights issue to fund further clinical trials and manufacturing scale-up for cancer vaccines being developed by its portfolio company Genvax Ltd.

MMI placed 7.4 million shares at £1.35 per share. David Best, CEO, told BioWorld International, "It would have been nice if we had done this earlier in the year when the share price was £3. But given the fall [in the share price] recently, this is a good amount of money and the price is OK."

Cambridge-based MMI decided to raise the money on the back of what Best called, "stonking results," coming out of current open-label Phase IIa trials of Genvax's vaccines in lymphoma, myeloma and prostate cancer. A fourth trial in colon cancer is due to start this month.

"The trial in lymphoma has achieved what we believe is a global first - a sustained immune response in a clinical trial of a DNA vaccine," Best said. The trial began in 2001, and the last patient was recruited in 2004. Of 25 patients with advanced lymphoma who had failed all other therapies, 18 have responded and are in remission.

Best said some of the money will be used to expedite the four trials and get the results out faster. Some will be devoted to developing a GMP process that enables more than one patient-specific vaccine to be manufactured in a single batch. That is possible using new disposable containers that allow different products to be made in the same vessel.

Southampton-based Genvax uses tetanus toxin as an immune potentiator, fused to cancer antigens to generate an antitumor response. The tetanus subunit is proprietary to the company, as is the method of linking it to the cancer antigens.

The lymphoma and myeloma products are based on antigens from individual patients, while the prostate and colon vaccines use generic prostate specific antigen and carcinoembryonic antigen, respectively.

MMI invested in the formation of Genvax in December, subsequently increasing its holding from 50 percent to 58 percent with a further investment in March. All the trials to date have been funded by cancer charities.

MMI also is planning to put more money into ruthenium chemotherapeutics being developed by another portfolio company, Oncosense Ltd. In all the preclinical assessment, those have been shown to be many times more potent than analogous platinum compounds, with much lower systemic toxicity. In mouse studies, there was no detectable liver toxicity at any dose.

"On that basis we are going straight into large-scale production with a manufacturing partner," Bests said. "We want to go into the clinic with a high-quality product. With this fund raising, we can go through to Phase II."

MMI is in discussions with several potential partners, and Best added that the funding would give the company more muscle in negotiations. "We don't want to give away too much of the upside," he said.