Angle will raise £12.2M, which will allow it to acquire assets from Axela to put the finishing touches to its full liquid biopsies solution.
Angle is a leader in the liquid biopsy market, the ‘holy grail’ of cancer diagnostics. The company has developed technology that recently outperformed the gold standard in the field. Angle is hoping to raise £12.2M (€13.7M), which will be used for the acquisition of assets from Axela for CAD 6.15M (€4.2M). This will provide the company with the technology it needs to produce a full ‘sample to answer’ liquid biopsy.
Angle will raise the funds by placing almost 30 million shares on the market at 35 pence (€0.40) each. A significant proportion of the fundraising will go towards the acquisition, but Angle will also complete the optimization and validation of its ovarian cancer triaging assay.
The acquisition will see Angle get its hands on certain assets from Axela, including intellectual property, fixed assets and inventory. Angle’s Parsortix system will be partnered by Axela’s analytical tool, which is unique in the field. The Angle-Axela combination would carry out the full process, from taking a blood sample to its final analysis, without the need for external help. Money from the fundraising will be put towards the integration of this ‘sample to answer’ system, its development and working capital.
Angle’s Parsortix system takes blood from the patient and captures circulating tumor cells based on their size and compressibility. A step-based reverse flow system harvests viable cells for analysis. Advantages include its sensitivity, low cost and ability to capture clinically relevant cancer cells. It will be combined Axela’s technology, which uses next-generation sequencing to analyze the gene expression of over 100 genes at a time.
Founder and CEO of Angle, Andrew Newland, believes the two technologies are a perfect match: “We believe the Parsortix™ Axela combination will provide a highly effective cancer gene panel solution based on a simple blood test that has the potential to enable precision medicine and transform cancer care in the future.”
Angle faces competition from a number of companies also working on liquid biopsies, including Novigenix and Oxford BioDynamics. But with the acquisition of Axela, Angle has the trick of now being able to offer the whole ‘sample to answer’ package up its sleeve.
Images – LobsteR / shutterstock.com; Angle