Health Check: Farewell, adieu as Argent Biopharma holders back ASX delisting

An overwhelming majority of Argent Biopharma shareholders support an ASX delisting in favour of a London presence. Read that and more in today's Health Check.

Pic via Getty Images

• Argent Biopharma packs its bags for London on a one-way ticket

• Patrys shares slump 50% on cancellation of key drug program

• Painchek targets US market for its pain detection app

Health Check is renowned biotech journo Tim Boreham’s daily wrap covering morning movers and shakers of note in the ASX Healthcare sector, Monday through Thursday.

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While there’s a healthy number of ASX life science listings, a growing cohort of companies has decided that better fortunes lie elsewhere.

The latest to bid adieu is medical pot play Argent Biopharma (ASX:RGT), with shareholders overwhelmingly endorsing  the company’s proposal to delist from the ASX in favour of an ongoing presence on the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

Argent cites a “significant lack of liquidity” and a complete lack of interest in a recent US$2 million raising on the part of local retail and institutional investors.

Formerly known as MGC Pharmaceuticals, Argent is developing therapies for the central nervous system and immunology-based treatments.

Its lead product CannEpil is for refractory epilepsy and cerebral palsy.

Argent can’t yet give a timeline for the demerger, as it has to attend to some regulatory stuff in the Old Dart that we will describe as ‘boring but important’.

As we mentioned on Monday, heart-valve innovator Anteris Technologies (ASX:AVR) postponed this Friday’s planned EGM to re-domicile in the US, list on the Nasdaq and raise $US75 to $US100 million.

Despite the delay, its plans remain unchanged.

In February, Rhinomed delisted in favour of listing in … nowhere, actually.

The maker of nasal devices for enhanced sporting performance and drug delivery, Rhinomed says its valuation “will no longer be distorted by the application of the company’s depressed share price and market capitalisation as the primary valuation methodology.”

Hmmm – that tends to happen when a share actually can be traded. 

But given Rhinomed’s ultra-low liquidity – the top three holders account for 66% of the register – investors won’t be missing out on too much action.

Last year, Bionomics and Kazia Therapeutics delisted in favour of an ongoing presence on the Nasdaq.

We’re talking about voluntary delistings; others have just f-faded away, in the immortal words of The Who.

The traffic isn’t altogether one way: the local bourse this year has welcomed Blinklab (ASX:BB1) to its ranks while CurveBeam AI (ASX:CVB) and Cleo Diagnostics (ASX:COV) debuted last year.

Argent shares this morning gained 4.7% to 56 cents.

Patrys cancels lead antibody drug program

Shares in antibody drug developer Patrys (ASX:PAB) this morning lost half their value after the company cancelled its lead drug program PAT-DX1 as a result of manufacturing “challenges”.

The company said while the drug material met manufacturing standards, it did so with a lower margin than previously and thus was deemed unsafe to use in human trials.

The company adds that given its experience with “potential product deterioration” when PAT-DX1 is stored long term, “the risk of potential safety issues from using this batch of PAT-DX1 is not acceptable.”

“I appreciate this is a major disappointment for our shareholders as it has been a prime area of focus for the company for several years,” CEO Dr James Campbell told antsy investors during a webinar this morning.

But as with John West and the fish it rejects, you can't dispute the company’s quality standards. An antibody fragment,  PAT-DX1 is about inhibiting DNA damage repair.

Damage repair sounds like  a good thing but not when the mechanism allows cancer cells to survive.

PAT-DX1 is a humanised and smaller version of deoxymab, a DNA damage repair antibody first identified in the inflammatory immune disorder lupus.

While most antibodies bind to the surface of cells, deoxymabs like PAT-DX1 penetrate into cells, then cross into the nucleus where they bind to the DNA and kill deficient or mutant cells.

Given that mechanism of action, deoxymabs are promising targeted delivery agents for chemotherapy and radiotherapy and also have application in inflammatory disorders such as vasculitis.

The ‘tumor agnostic’ DX-1 was thought to be useful for gliomas and melanomas and  breast, prostate, pancreatic and ovarian cancers.

Given it’s not the first time the company has had PAT-DX1 production challenges, Patrys is now focusing on its second candidate, PAT-DX3.

“Similar in structure to the majority of successful therapeutic antibodies”, PAT-DX3 has superior yield and stability to PAT-DX1 and is easier to manufacture.

Having mastered PAT-DX3 production, Patrys is preparing for commercial scale production in an engineering run.

Further preclinical studies will determine where exactly the company goes with this one, but Dr Cambell was adamant that the company to date has fully informed shareholders of the various delays and setbacks.

As for PAT-DX1, the company plans to seek a big pharma partner with “requisite expertise and resources to optimise a robust manufacturing process for this challenging molecule.”

Patrys shares closed 50% lower at 3 cents apiece.

Painchek close to US filing

Having made decent inroads into the local and UK aged-care markets with its mobile phone-based pain detection device, PainChek (ASX:PCK) reckons it has its ducks in the row for a US approval application.

The company this morning said it had gathered the data from a supportive clinical validation exercise, covering five aged-care homes in Iowa and New York.

The company says the “data sets have been locked down, performance data analysis of the 105 participating subjects has been completed … and the preliminary statistical analysis is in the process of  being finalised for incorporation into the final clinical evaluation report.”

The envisaged application to the US Food & Drug Administration would be by way of de novo (new device) application.

The US is the biggest aged-care market, with 1.7 million patients and residents and an addressable market of US$85 million a year.

The eponymous Painchek device measures pain based on facial features, supported by the established Abbey Pain Scale.

Painchek is relevant for people who can’t enunciate their pain, such as those with dementia. At the other demographic end, it’s also applicable to the pre-verbal kids market and it's hoped that US approval would support an expansion into this market.

The company intends to provide a further update on the application process by the end of the month.

Painchek shares were steady at 3 cents.