Member Info for Bermudashorts

Much of the text comes from the time of the original grant application, including the mention of electroporation. It's clearly been updated a while ago but I'm not sure we can read too much into it in terms of trial design or methodology.

Looking forward to confirmation from Scancell that they've received clinical trial approval from the South African regulators and then they should be in a position to give a more comprehensive update.

OXT published their Annual Report yesterday. I'm struggling to post a link but I'm sure anyone who is interested can find it via google. This is some of what they had to say about Scancell.

'Scancell also raised £48m in two rounds that were not VCT qualifying thereby diluting your company stake.
Our largest holding is now Scancell, over a third of NAV per share. Scancell’s share price has seen significant volatility. Indeed, over the accounting period, the Scancell share price more than tripled, increasing from 6.4p (bid price as at 29 February 2020) to 22.5p (bid price as at 28 February 2021). Scancell has had a transformational year, and it is pleasing to note that the market appears to be finally starting to see the value this investment may have. We still believe the investment has further potential given its technologies and the number of “shots on goal” it has.

Scancell has raised £30.0m from Redmile Group LLC, a US based specialist healthcare and life sciences investment firm, to develop a wide range of exciting prospects. It is developing novel immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer based on its technology platforms, ImmunoBody, Moditope and AvidiMab, with four products in multiple cancer indications and the development of a second generation vaccine for Covid-19.

During the course of the financial year around £101k was realised from sales of shares in Scancell at an average price of 17p per share over 2 x cost. This top slicing has improved your Company’s liquidity.'

So it would appear that OXT sold 11.5% of their Scancell stock in order to improve their own liquidity. Having said that, they still own over 4.5m shares and Scancell is by far the biggest holding in their portfolio. Perhaps also worth noting that 3 of their 4 directors also hold Scancell stock as private individuals. Anyway good to see that they consider Scancell has had a transformational year and they see further potential.

'Due to its relatively small size the Company remains exposed to balancing solvency requirements and compliance with VCT rules: there is no flexibility in the latter, and there is now much greater emphasis on Directors explaining to shareholders why it is still reasonable to adopt the going concern basis when accounts are being prepared. Sufficient comfort regarding liquidity is provided by your Company’s large stake in Scancell (held at a substantial profit) which is listed on AIM and, post year end, the move of Arecor to the AIM market.'

Malachi,

Re. the performance of Parsortix in this study - the authors seemed impressed:-

'CTC enrichment from BM patients is challenging as most CTCs shed by BM have been shown to be of a more mesenchymal phenotype, including negative for EpCAM . Here we show that using a microfluidic marker-independent device, CTCs can be found in a large fraction of BM patients. A total of 50% of breast cancer and NSCLC samples showed CTC, whereas 36% of melanoma patients, had CTCs. The CTC positivity rates gained through this approach were clearly higher especially in NSCLC cases with brain metastases compared to other studies using, e.g., the EpCAM-dependent CELLSEARCH® system, with CTC positivity rates of only 12.5% [21]. Similarly, also in breast cancer BM patients, CELLSEARCH CTC positivity rates of 20–22% have been reported '

Ruck,

Exactly - as well as the infrastructure to run clinical trials

Chester,

It's not trivial at all. Moditope is the main reason why many of us are holding here and it'll be great to finally see it enter the clinic - God knows we've waited long enough!

25 recs plus one from me - thoroughly deserved

Another peer reviewed research paper featuring Parsortix has been published today. Researchers from University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf have been looking at the expression of 2 proteins (CD44 and CD74) in cancer patients with brain mets. They found both proteins were expressed on CTCs but not necessarily on matched tissue biopsies from the brain mets. They believe these proteins may therefore play a role in the survival of the CTCs in the bloodstream. The following paragraph highlights the advantages of Parsortix over other antibody based systems:-

'CTC enrichment from BM patients is challenging as most CTCs shed by BM have been shown to be of a more mesenchymal phenotype, including negative for EpCAM. Here we show that using a microfluidic marker-independent device, CTCs can be found in a large fraction of BM patients. A total of 50% of breast cancer and NSCLC samples showed CTC, whereas 36% of melanoma patients, had CTCs. The CTC positivity rates gained through this approach were clearly higher especially in NSCLC cases with brain metastases compared to other studies using, e.g., the EpCAM-dependent CELLSEARCH® system, with CTC positivity rates of only 12.5% [21]. Similarly, also in breast cancer BM patients, CELLSEARCH CTC positivity rates of 20–22% have been reported'

https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/13/6993

Burble,

They already do usually include exactly exactly that image in their presentations. See slide no. 8.

https://www.scancell.co.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/docspres/presentation-to-lsx-world-congress-february-2020.pdf

An excellent article here summarising the recent Covidity research paper:-

'Study significance

The study highlights the importance of DNA-based platforms for the cost-effective and rapid development of potential vaccines. Moreover, the study reveals that bivalent DNA vaccines containing both spike and nucleocapsid proteins can induce broad-spectrum antibody and T cell responses against both wild-type and mutated SARS-CoV-2.

A relatively straightforward process of incorporating mutated immunogens makes DNA platforms a valuable strategy to target newly emerging viral variants.'

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210624/Bivalent-DNA-SARS-CoV-2-vaccine-induces-strong-humoral-and-cellular-immunity-in-mice.aspx

Konar,

In answer to your 15.43, all I know is that he strongly feels the incorporation of Zakari should have been announced via RNS. I hope when it is finally announced and full details emerge then he'll take a different view and change his mind.

Other than that I don't know whether there are any other factors that may be behind his actions. However, in view of the efforts he's making on behalf of the UK diagnostics industry to hold the Government to account re. the Covid LFT debacle particularly regarding lack of transparency, it seems governance and transparency are clearly important issues to him.

I haven't ever thought or suggested that business people are successful because they are principled, that would be a mistake. Equally it would be just as much of a mistake to believe that all successful people have no principles. What I'm absolutely certain of though, is that if he really wanted to influence the SP to buy at a lower price, we'd never know anything about it - as AB124 has pointed out there are much easier and less obvious ways. He certainly wouldn't do it in such a public manner.

The point I was really trying to make was that he's said he'll sell in an orderly way and we know his reasons aren't related to the potential of Scancell to succeed which I find reassuring and I hope others do too.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/06/23/lateral-flow-test-approval-process-must-reformed-industry-leaders/

TF/Konar

You think this is all a ploy from David Evans to lower the SP to allow him to him to buy more cheaply? Seriously?!!!

As an indication, it's quite easy to go back and check previous annual reports and look at directors' holdings. Back in 2016, David Evans owned just over 5m shares. He has always been supportive of Scancell and may well have taken part in subsequent fundraisings and bought/sold some stock. Someone mentioned the figure of 7m shares and that sounds credible. It certainly wouldn't be anywhere near 100m shares and anything over 24m is above the notifiable threshold so it's definitely less than that. Either way, I'm not sure it matters too much, David has said he'll dispose of his shares in an orderly manner and he'll be true to his word.

I think it's worth reiterating that the reason for his decision is completely unrelated to the investment potential here and is purely down to a difference of opinion with both Scancell and their nomad on the timing of an RNS. Sometimes in life things don't always slot neatly into right/wrong but sit in a grey area in between. I believe David's point was that whilst he accepts Panmure's/Scancell's confirmation that there is no regulatory need to issue an RNS now regarding Zakari, he felt that in the interests of transparency, there was a moral need.

As I mentioned earlier, David has been an important champion of Scancell's cause over many years. When Chairman he kept his fees at just £10k pa and at times took a ridiculous amount of stick . Does the fact that DE is selling have any impact on the success or failure of Scancell's products? No, but it's a shame nonetheless.

IMO of course.

Chester,

Scancell Ltd is a subsidiary of Scancell Holdings. It's actually the original company but think Scancell Holdings was created for their first IPO onto the PLUS market and became the parent company and Scancell Ltd continues as a subsidiary.

Don't know what happened with the title on that last post so will post again.

Over the next day or so you're probably going to read all sorts of explanations and speculation. Most of it will be nonsense.

All I know is that Zachari is greek for sugar, hence my assumption that they may decide to move all glycan related IP across. It's quite common for biotechs to group different tech. in different subsidiary companies and it may be a simple as that. Who knows?

Crumbs,

Thanks for that. Perhaps they'll use one of each (new UoN method and tried and tested proprietary method as a control). Who knows? No doubt all will become clear soon enough.

Crumbs,

I think that particular icase funded PhD doesn't start until the new academic year in October (see link below). That's not to say that James Dixon's team haven't already come up with needle free delivery systems but don't rule out the chances of Scancell using a proprietary system.

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pgstudy/courses/doctoral-training-programmes/mrc-integrated-midlands-partnership-for-biomedical-training.aspx

Thanks for that Rob

It may well be that the following has already been posted, if so please ignore.

The other day CC kindly posted a link to job vacancies for 2 scientists and a technician. They also have a 4th vacancy for a Quality Assurance Manager who will report to the Head of Quality, Akua Asare. I'm not sure when Akua Asare joined Scancell but think she has appeared on their website relatively recently. Guess she thinks she's going to be busy if she needs an assistant and good to see Scancell building the infrastructure needed to execute larger and/or multiple clinical trials.

https://www.scancell.co.uk/quality-assurance-manager-oxford

This taken from Angle's latest corporate presentation should offer some reassurance:-

- 26 granted patents: United States, Europe, China, Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico with patent coverage to 2034

- Proprietary technology with copyright on software and designs, technical know-how, manufacturing and operating procedures, methods and processes

It's naive to believe that Parsortix will be the only microfluidic system that eventually makes it to market, although Angle will have first mover advantage and AN has previously stated that any competition is years behind in terms of securing regulatory approval. The market is absolutely vast, growing all the time and more than big enough for all.