Drug development start-up Aposense Ltd. today filed a prospectus to raise $20 million in an IPO on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) at a company value of $200 million. Aposense seeks to apply apoptosis (programmed cell death) to develop personalized oncology, cardiology, and neurology treatments.
The company's first product is a molecular imaging product for brain cancer, which is undergoing a Phase II clinical trial. The company hopes to bring the drug to market by 2012.
Aposense hopes to receive $9 million from Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA), under the second stage of the companies' cooperation agreement. Teva invested $2 million in the first stage of their joint development of new cancer treatments
Aposense will later decide whether to continue its collaboration with Teva, and to equally share in expenses and commercial rights; to pay 25% of costs and reap 32% of revenue; or not to share in costs and receive 7% of royalties on sales.
In late 2009, Aposense signed a joint development and marketing agreement with Belgium's Ion Beam Applications SA (Euronext: IBAB). Aposense received a $2.5 million down payment when it signed the deal.
Aposense lost NIS 28.6 million in 2009. The company's revenue rose to NIS 645,000 in 2009 from NIS 7,000 in 2008, and NIS 83,000 in 2007.
Former Teva chairman Eli Hurvitz currently owns 1.92%, fully diluted, of Aposense. Hurvitz serves as chairman of Aposense. The stake of Pontifax Fund LP, which he founded, owns 7.1%. The company's largest shareholders is Bargal R&D Investments Ltd. with 18.1%, and other shareholders include Heartwood Ltd. with 10.4%, Ziegler-Meditech Equity Partners LP, Aposense co-founder vice chairman and CSO Dr. Ilan Ziv, with 13.8%, and CEO Yoram Ashery with 2.5%.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 16, 2010
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