REG - Angle PLC - Streamlining of operations to increase cash runway

AngleAnnouncement

18/10/2022 07:00

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RNS Number : 1774D  Angle PLC  18 October 2022

 For immediate release  18 October 2022

 

ANGLE plc ("the Company")

 

STREAMLINING OF OPERATIONS TO INCREASE CASH RUNWAY

 

Cost savings of c. £2.6 million in 2023 rising to c. £4.0 million per annum
thereafter

 

 No significant impact on ongoing operations expected

 

 

ANGLE plc (AIM:AGL OTCQX:ANPCY), a world-leading liquid biopsy company,
announces that the Board has taken the decision to close the Company's
facilities in Toronto, Canada in an orderly wind down. The Company retains its
high specification clinical laboratory facility in Plymouth Meeting,
Pennsylvania, US, as its central hub for North American activities.

 

As communicated in the Company's Interim Results on 29 September 2022, the
Company is committed to tightly controlling costs and focusing on near term
commercialisation of its market leading FDA cleared Parsortix(®) system for
cancer liquid biopsy. The decision to close the Company's Canadian operations
has been taken in light of the increasing cost of operating in Canada due to
adverse currency movements and recent proposed changes to the UK R&D tax
credit rules. The removal of the 33% cash rebate on eligible R&D costs for
R&D work undertaken outside the UK will effectively make overseas R&D
costs 50% higher going forward, making it much more cost effective to move
R&D operations from Canada to the UK.

 

The actions being taken will reduce costs and extend the cash runway of the
business into H2 2024, allowing the Company to continue to focus on making
commercial progress. ANGLE expects the closure of the Canadian operations to
result in additional one-off closure and settlement cash impacts of c. £0.5
million compared to ongoing operating costs budgeted for the current year. In
future years, there will be net cash savings of c. £2.6 million in 2023
rising to c. £4.0 million per annum thereafter.

 

All research and development will now be centralised in Guildford UK and
equipment and assets relocated. Staff at Guildford have the expertise to move
forward on all projects and ANGLE does not expect any significant impact on
its ongoing operations.

 

 

For further information:

 

 ANGLE plc                                   +44 (0) 1483 343434
 Andrew Newland, Chief Executive

 Ian Griffiths, Finance Director

 Andrew Holder, Head of Investor Relations

 Berenberg (NOMAD and Joint Broker)

 Toby Flaux, Ciaran Walsh, Milo Bonser       +44 (0) 20 3207 7800

 Jefferies (Joint Broker)                    +44 (0) 20 7029 8000

 Max Jones, Thomas Bective

 FTI Consulting

 Simon Conway, Ciara Martin                  +44 (0) 203 727 1000

 Matthew Ventimiglia (US)                    +1 (212) 850 5624

 

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to
constitute inside information as stipulated under the EU Market Abuse
Regulation (596/2014). Upon the publication of this announcement via a
regulatory information service, this information is considered to be in the
public domain.

 

For Frequently Used Terms, please see the Company's website on
https://angleplc.com/investor-relations/glossary/
(https://angleplc.com/investor-relations/glossary/)

 

 

Notes for editors

 

About ANGLE plc www.angleplc.com (http://www.angleplc.com)

ANGLE is a world leading liquid biopsy company with sample-to-answer
solutions. ANGLE's proven patent protected circulating tumor cell (CTC)
harvesting technology is known as the Parsortix(®) system.

 

ANGLE's Parsortix(®) system is FDA cleared for its intended use in
metastatic breast cancer and is currently the first and only FDA cleared
medical device to harvest intact circulating cancer cells from blood.

 

Intended use

The Parsortix(®) PC1 system is an in vitro diagnostic device intended to
enrich circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from peripheral blood collected in
K(2)EDTA tubes from patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.  The
system employs a microfluidic chamber (a Parsortix cell separation cassette)
to capture cells of a certain size and deformability from the population of
cells present in blood.  The cells retained in the cassette are harvested by
the Parsortix PC1 system for use in subsequent downstream assays.  The end
user is responsible for the validation of any downstream assay.  The
standalone device, as indicated, does not identify, enumerate or characterize
CTCs and cannot be used to make any diagnostic/prognostic claims for CTCs,
including monitoring indications or as an aid in any disease management and/or
treatment decisions.

 

The Parsortix system enables a liquid biopsy (a simple blood test) to be used
to provide the circulating metastatic breast cancer cells to the user in a
format suitable for multiple types of downstream analyses.  The system is
based on a microfluidic device that captures cells based on a combination of
their size and compressibility.  The system is epitope independent and can
capture all phenotypes of CTCs (epithelial, mesenchymal and EMTing CTCs) as
well as CTC clusters in a viable form (alive).  CTCs harvested from the
system enable a complete picture of a cancer to be seen; as being an intact
cell they allow DNA, RNA and protein analysis as well as cytological and
morphological examination and may provide comparable analysis to a tissue
biopsy in metastatic breast cancer. Because CTC analysis is a non-invasive
process, unlike tissue biopsy, it can be repeated as often as needed. This is
important because cancer develops and changes over time and there is a clear
medical need for up-to-date information on the status of a patient's tumor. In
addition, the live CTCs harvested by the Parsortix system can be cultured,
which offers the potential for testing tumor response to drugs outside the
patient.

 

The Parsortix technology is the subject of 26 granted patents in Europe, the
United States, China, Australia, Canada, India, Japan and Mexico with three
extensive families of patents are being progressed worldwide.

 

In the United States, the Parsortix(®) PC1 system has received a Class II
Classification from FDA for use with metastatic breast cancer patients. FDA
clearance is seen as the global gold standard. ANGLE's Parsortix system is the
first ever FDA cleared system for harvesting CTCs for subsequent analysis.
ANGLE has applied the IVD CE Mark to the same system for the same intended use
in Europe.

 

ANGLE has also completed three separate 200 subject clinical studies under a
programme designed to develop an ovarian cancer pelvic mass triage test, with
the results showing best in class accuracy (AUC-ROC) of 95.4% with sensitivity
of 90% and specificity of 93%. This excellent clinical result demonstrates the
utility of cells harvested by the Parsortix system, which the Company believes
is the "best sample" for liquid biopsy analysis as it recovers intact, living
cancer cells that are involved in the progression of the disease providing
prospective information.

 

ANGLE has established formal collaborations with world-class cancer centres
and major corporates such as Abbott, Philips and QIAGEN, and works closely
with leading CTC translational research customers. These Key Opinion Leaders
(KOLs) are working to identify applications with medical utility (clear
benefit to patients), and to secure clinical data that demonstrates that
utility in patient studies. The body of evidence as to the benefits of the
Parsortix system is growing rapidly from our own clinical studies in
metastatic breast cancer and ovarian cancer and also from KOLs with 70
peer-reviewed publications and numerous publicly available posters from 31
independent cancer centres, available on our website.

 

ANGLE has established clinical services laboratories in the UK and the United
States to accelerate commercialisation of the Parsortix system and act as
demonstrators to support product development. The laboratories offer services
globally to pharmaceutical and biotech customers for use of Parsortix in
cancer drug trials and, once the laboratories are accredited and tests
validated, will provide Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs) for patient
management.

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