ChemomAb Ltd.., a clinical-stage biotech company focused on the discovery and development of innovative therapeutics for fibrosis-related diseases with high unmet need, today announced the completion of its merger with Anchiano Therapeutics Ltd. (“Anchiano”).
The combined company has changed its name to Chemomab Therapeutics Ltd. and will trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol “CMMB” beginning on March 17, 2021.
Chemomab Therapeutics (“Chemomab”) has secured gross proceeds of $45.5 million from the sale of American Depositary Shares (ADSs) and warrants through a private investment in public equity (PIPE) financing. The financing is being led by new and certain existing investors of Chemomab, including Cormorant Asset Management, OrbiMed, Peter Thiel and Christian Angermayer’s Presight Capital and Apeiron Investment Group.
Chemomab expects to use net proceeds from this private placement to advance in parallel three Phase 2 clinical trials for its lead product, CM-101, a novel antibody for treating rare fibrotic conditions, as well as to further develop its earlier-stage pipeline. In February, Chemomab announced that it had begun enrolment of patients in the SPRING study, a Phase 2a trial of CM-101 for patients suffering from primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). Chemomab plans to begin enrolment of patients in a Phase 2 trial for systemic sclerosis (SSc) later in the year. PSC and SSc are inflammatory-fibrotic diseases affecting multiple organs such as the liver in PSC and skin and lungs in SSc. Both indications have a significant unmet need, with patients suffering from debilitating symptoms and no current FDA-approved disease modifying treatment options. Chemomab is also advancing CM-101 into a Phase 2a clinical trial to test CM-101 subcutaneous formulation and its anti-fibrotic effect in patients diagnosed with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. Clinical readouts are expected during 2021-2022. In addition, Chemomab also announced today that it has entered into a binding agreement with Kestrel Therapeutics Inc. under which it will sell Anchiano’s preclinical RAS programs to Kestrel for $1 million.
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“We are excited by Chemomab’s continued progress and believe our becoming a publicly-traded company and financing from a group of outstanding investors will position the combined company well to accelerate the advancement of our clinical programs as well as further develop our product pipeline,” said Dr. Adi Mor, chief executive officer and co-founder of Chemomab. “We now have $55 million on our balance sheet which provides sufficient cash through H2 2023 and all three of our potentially value-inflecting Phase 2 clinical read-outs,” she said.
Commenting on the PIPE, Dr. Stephen Squinto, chairman of Chemomab’s board and executive partner at OrbiMed, stated, “We are proud to support the exciting innovations taking place at Chemomab. Patients suffering from diseases such as PSC and SSc are in desperate need of disease-modifying therapies, and we believe CM-101 has the therapeutic potential to address the underlying inflammatory and fibrotic pathways implicated in both diseases.”
Anchiano’s outgoing CEO, Mr. Neil Cohen will join Chemomab’s board of directors, which is led by chairman Dr. Stephen Squinto, OrbiMed executive partner and one of the founders of Alexion. Other new board members include Dr. Alan Moses, previously global chief medical officer of Novo Nordisk A/S, Dr. Claude Nicaise, who previously held senior roles at Alexion and Bristol Myers Squibb, Mr. Joel Maryles, previously senior managing director at Citigroup and Dr. Nissim Darvish, venture partner at OrbiMed Israel.
Source: Biospace
