CRO NexMed raises $2.7m to develop delivery tech
On September 30 NexMed had $1.5m in cash and had lost compliance with NASDAQ. Since then the contract research organisation (CRO) has taken a number of measures to improve its situation but is yet to achieve the share price needed for NASDAQ compliance.
Now, NexMed has raised $2.3m in a private placement of promissory notes from two accredited US investors. An additional $438,000 was raised through the sale of its New Jersey state tax credits and net operating losses.
These funds will be used for general corporate purposes and to develop the NexACT delivery system, with particular emphasis validating new uses for the technology.
A key aspect of development is the use of the technology for increasing the bioavailability of oral formulations. NexACT research was initially focused on transdermal delivery but recent work suggests NexMed can broaden its scope to cover oral administration.
NexMed claims that preclinical proof-of-concept studies showed use of NexACT resulted in a ten-fold increase in the bioavailability of an oral formulation of Taxol (paclitaxel).
This research was conducted by the R&D group at Bio-Quant, which NexMed agreed to buy in November 2009. By acquiring Bio-Quant NexMed raised the market value of its listed securities to over $35m, helping it meet one of the NASDAQ listing requirements it had lost compliance with.
Since then the combined team has “made solid progress toward developing additional, key indications for our current drug pipeline as well as in the discovery and validation of new uses for the NexACT drug delivery technology”, according to Bassam Damaj, CEO of NexMed.
Damaj added that NexMed has “received multiple expressions of interest from biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies who may be interested in assessing the NexACT technology as a delivery mechanism for their own proprietary drug candidates”.
