LONDON (Alliance News) - C4X Discovery Holdings PLC said its pretax loss more than doubled after research and development costs came in higher for the first six months of its financial year.
The drug discovery and development company said pretax loss widened to GBP3.5 million in the six months to January 31, from a loss of GBP1.3 million for the same period the previous year, as research and development costs rose to GBP2.7 million from GBP936,000.
C4X said this increase in costs came as it made progress across its in-house pipeline, in particular in its Orexin programme, geared towards finding a method of treating addiction. Within the Orexin-1 programme, C4X has identified a potential imaging agent for its planned phase I trial, it said.
Six therapeutic projects are currently underway, C4X said, adding its goal is to increase the number of pipeline programmes more than threefold by 2019.
The group said it refined its hybrid business model over the year, and said access to C4X propriety technologies on a fee for service basis has now been discontinued to maximise internal resource available for value creating pipeline projects.
C4X, which currently only generates revenue from joint development agreements where it is assisting customers with their drug discovery process, said revenue was flat on the same period last year at GBP200,000.
C4X noted that after the year end, it purchased genetic technology platform provider Adorial Ltd and its Taxonomy3 technology, which is designed to increase the probability of success when developing small molecule drugs.
The company said it expects to increase its expenditure on research and development as its programmes progress through further pre-clinical development during the remainder of 2016 and subsequent year.
Shares in C4X Discovery were up 1.5% at 103.00 pence on Thursday.
By Hannah Boland; hannahboland@alliancenews.com; @Hannaheboland
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