Roquefort Therapeutics (LON: ROQ) has announced its second acquisition in seven months. Cancer medicines company Oncogeni Ltd is being acquired for the issue of 50 million shares and there is a placing to raise £1.01m at 14p a share.
This is the second acquisition since Roquefort floated as a shell on the standard list back in March 2021. The original placing was at 5p a share. Last November, Lyramid was acquired for cash and shares and there was a £3m placing at 10p a share.
The group’s focus is early-stage biotech operations. The latest deal means that it has a portfolio of four cancer programs.
Oncogeni
Two pre-clinical families of innovative cell and RNA oncology medicines come with Oncogeni, as well as a laboratory facility in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Oncogeni’s founder, Nobel Laureate, Professor Sir Martin Evans is joining the board as is Ajan Reginald who will become the new chief executive.
The shareholder base will be widened with new shareholders including global pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo and biotech investor CH Health.
Financial statements for the year to May 2022 show net assets of £14,556. There should be further information released when the proposed acquisition is finalised.
There are programmes for two existing technologies being developed by Roquefort Therapeutics. The ROQA1 and ROQA2 potential antibody programmes demonstrated significant anti-cancer activity in in vivo models of metastatic tumours. The other technology programme has demonstrated that lead oligonucleotide drug candidates significantly reduce Midkine mRNA levels in human cancer cells.
