West Coast Editor

Placing 3.75 million Class B preferred shares with institutional investors and others for C$4 each to raise C$15million, YM BioSciences Inc. went public in two places - on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market.

The placement amounts to about 22 percent of the firm's enlarged share capital, and puts the firm's valuation at C$67 million, said Len Vernon, director of finance and administration for Mississauga, Ontario-based YM, which is still deciding exactly how the C$15 million (US$9.74 million) raised will be spent.

"There are some that have been approved, but not yet commenced, and that was dependent on the funding," Vernon told BioWorld Today. "Now, some of them will start but not all. We're going to sit down and assess our plans."

Founded in 1994, YM has four products in the clinic and two pivotal studies expected to begin this year. A fifth drug is approved for trials, and the company has an option to acquire a sixth already in a clinical trial.

Farthest along is tesmilifene, described as a "small-molecule chemopotentiator" for which Phase III data was positive from a metastatic breast cancer trial, presented at last year's American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting.

The National Cancer Institute of Canada offered results showing patients receiving a tesmilifene/doxorubicin combination therapy lived about 50 percent longer than those receiving doxorubicin alone: 23.6 months vs. 15.6 months. YM acquired the rights to tesmilifene, which also is also being investigated for hormone-refractory prostate cancer in combination with mitoxantrone, from the University of Manitoba after the NCIC conducted the trial.

A pivotal trial with tesmilifene is slated for later this year, and a Phase II pilot trial with 28 patients in the prostate indication is under way in the U.S. and Canada. An interim analysis has suggested efficacy and survival benefit, the company said.

Another drug, TheraCIM, which targets the epidermal growth factor receptor, is in a Phase II study in head and neck cancer in Canada, and a Phase I/II study has been approved in Canada and South Africa. TheraCIM is being developed for use before, during or after chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The radiolabeled version, called RadioTheraCIM, is in a pilot clinical study in Italy for treatment of brain cancer.

YM also has EGF Vaccine, which is made of recombinant EGF conjugated with a carrier protein, P64k, as an immune stimulator intended to spark an antibody response to EGF. Recruitment is almost finished for a Phase II study in the UK and Canada treating non-small-cell lung cancer. EGF Vaccine and TheraCIM originated from the Centro de Inmunologia Molecular in Havana, Cuba.

"We did some products out of Cuba six or seven years ago," Vernon said. "A couple of years ago we did a private placement, and brought in tesmilifene and Norelin."

The latter was licensed from BioStar Inc., of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It's a therapeutic vaccine designed to stimulate production of antibodies to gonadotrophin-releasing hormone, thus cutting back hormones that may boost the growth of prostate cancer. Approval has been granted in Canada for a Phase I trial in earlier-stage prostate cancer, and the drug may work against other sex-hormone dependent cancers, such as breast and ovarian.

"They had a product and couldn't carry it through, and licensed out the animal part and were left with the human," which YM took over, Vernon said.

With KS Biomedix Holdings plc, of London, YM has what's been termed a "super-high-affinity" monoclonal antibody, YMB-1003, in Phase I for colorectal cancer. YMB-1003 targets the carcinoembryonic antigen, which is over-expressed in most colorectal cancers and used as a marker for disease progression. YM has certain first rights of refusal on the product.

Deeper in the pipeline, YM is working preclinically on another high-affinity monoclonal antibody targeting the EGF receptor, which could become a second-generation product to TheraCIM; two anticancer vaccines; and a drug targeted at bacterial and fungal infections.

YM's stock (TSE:YM_PB) closed Thursday at C$4, down C10 cents.