Laminar Pharma, Looking for Buyers in Europe for its New Anti-Tumor Drug

Laminar Pharma, about to take the leap. The Balearic laboratory, founded in 2006 by a professor of Cellular Biology at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), Pablo Vicente Escribá, has started a financing round to raise seven million euros. Its objective is to conclude the trials required to market a new drug, LAM561, indicated for the treatment of glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer that attacks the spinal cord and brain.

Laminar Pharma hopes to reach an agreement with a pharmaceutical company to license the compound for more than ten million euros, preferably a European company. Glioblastoma patients who receive the treatment available to date, radiochemotherapy, can grow the tumor again in seven or eight months and, after this process, die in fifteen or 16 months.

The drug trial, currently in phase III, is being carried out in 18 Spanish, French, Italian and English hospitals. To date, 124 patients of the 140 planned have participated, almost 90% of the total. The committee’s conclusions are largely based on the 45 out of 100 patients who did develop the tumor after taking the placebo.

David Roberto, financial director of Laminar Pharma, explained that the company has already had two meetings with the independent scientific committee that has analyzed the trial data. At the end of September they already confirmed its usefulness and, in February, based on the unblinded data of the study, the same committee recommended that the trials continue without modifications , recalls the executive.

Laminar Pharma considers “the most sensible thing” to license its new drug with a European company and they are considering proposing it to an American company in a second phase.

The company does not yet have detailed statistical data, although, according to Roberto, it has been independently confirmed that there is a deviation between the group that takes the placebo and the one that takes this medication. In summer it hopes to reach the number of 66 patients with glioblastoma progression that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) needs to be able to request approval. It will be then that they will have numerical data on the effectiveness of the compound.

Possible buyers for Laminar Pharma new drug

Laminar Pharma is currently in negotiations with several pharmaceutical companies to license the drug, but refuses to give any name citing confidentiality reasons. David Roberto affirms that, for them, “the most sensible thing is an agreement with a European pharmaceutical company and, for now, leaving the United States free . ” In this way, the manager insists, it would be possible to sign a second agreement for a second license in the North American country.

Regarding the amount of the agreement, which has been placed above ten million euros, they hope to receive financial proposals once the effectiveness of the compound is confirmed, says the company’s financial director. Without ruling out a scenario in which the negotiation lasts a little longer, until the end of the year, when they have statistical data on the validity of the solution. “If you have data that supports your effectiveness, you can ask for other figures: a higher figure ,” adds Roberto.

Its objective is to obtain seven million euros to conclude the last phase of the process of verifying the effectiveness of the medicine, although, if signing a license for use with a pharmaceutical company , two million would be enough, the executive anticipates .

Financing

The money raised in the current round comes from individuals or companies. For now from no great fund. The largest contributions collected amount to 300,000 euros in one case and two others that have put in sums above 100,000 euros. Among these is David Devesa’s Dentol Capital, which contributed 120,000 euros.

In general, they are family offices with a background in the field of biology or chemistry and who like the project. A way of operating that is a trademark of the house. “It’s how we have always functioned: local people, but also new additions that come to us via webinars,” explained David Roberto. There was only one fund in the capital of Laminar Pharma and at the very beginning, Invernostra, from which they repurchased the shares .

Since the incorporation of David Roberto at the end of 2020, the influx of investment has grown significantly. Since 2006, the company had raised fourteen million euros in capital. In the last three and a half years, 24 million have entered . The contributions have also come from the public treasury, as in the case of the six million euros in non-refundable funds that they received from the Horizon 2020 line of the European Union. Although crowdfunding has also played a role.

In 2019 Laminar Pharma turned to the Capital Cell platform to obtain funds in this way. After this bet, they went from having about one hundred shareholders in 2018 to 800 in 2019. Today, after successive contributions of this type, there are already more than 2,500 shareholders . “For a company that sells nothing, it is a very high number,” celebrates David Roberto.

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(Featured image by fotoblend via Pixabay)

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