Verici Dx (VRCI ) said it intends to raise at least £10m - around $13.3m - in gross proceeds in order to fund its current product developments and to explore potential growth opportunities.
Verici, a developer of clinical diagnostics for organ transplants, will raise at least £10m at a price of 35p a share, a discount of 6.67% to Verici’s closing mid-price on Thursday afternoon.
As of 31 December 2021, the Company had unaudited net cash of £7.7 million ($10.3 million). Whilst there is no immediate cash requirement, the Company stated its expectations at the time of the IPO that it would be likely to raise additional funds in 2022, Verici reiterated today.
Verici believes the proceeds will enable it to continue the ‘accelerated progress’ the business has experienced to date; this includes maintaining momentum on the development of the Company’s third product, Protega™ as well as to maximise the efficiency gains in using existing validation sites set up for the Company’s two lead products, Clarava™ and Tuteva™.
Verici is in the process of developing an additional product - Protega™, a liquid biopsy that aims to predict the risk of fibrosis and long-term graft failure - for its product testing portfolio.
To date, studies exceeded their enrollment objectives in terms of site and participant numbers.
The company told investors that this will assure ‘a robust data package’ for its analysis, thereby paving the way for efficient clinical validation work on the next study for Protega™.
Verici will also use the funds to accelerate its commercialisation of Clarava™ and Tuteva™;
Verici’s Clarava™ assay is a pre-transplant prognosis test for the risk of early acute rejection, while Tuteva™ is a post-transplant diagnostic focused upon acute cellular rejection. Both products aim to understand how a patient will and is responding to kidney transplantation.
Most recently, Verici announced the completion of analytical validation for Clarava™ and Tuteva™, an essential component for the clinical interpretation of its assay results.
This supports, in addition to the clinical validation data expected to be reported from clinical studies around the end of 1Q22, the Company’s planned application for a local coverage determination for
TutevaTM under the MolDx programme operated by GBA Palmetto, it told investors. The company noted that such coverage would provide coverage for 48 US states.
Verici also intends to finalise the construction of its expanded CLIA approved lab facilities in Tennessee to support the scale-up of its operations in advance of this commercialisation. The laboratory upgrades will accelerate capabilities ahead of marketing the two leading products.
In addition, Verici intends to use some of the proceeds to build on longer term, potentially complementary opportunities to leverage its data assets, add new technology and use AI capability to support and enhance the use of Verici Dx product tests alongside histopathology imagery and in the analysis of whole transcriptome and other data, the company explained.
The company outlined that these potential opportunities support the Company’s objective of supporting clinicians in the delivery of increasingly personalised transplant medicine.
Globally, there are c. 300,000 people waiting for kidney transplants, with around 95,000 transplants currently performed each year, of which c.24,000 are performed in the US and 25,000 in Europe; Verici’s expanded product portfolio is likely to include longer-term rejection support the Company’s objective for better patient outcomes for patients and healthcare.
To support its longer-term vision, Verici will use a portion of net proceeds from the fundraise to build out a “clinician’s platform” in transplant, which in the near term will focus on kidney transplant but in the long term could expand to other auto-immune diseases and other organs.
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