VolitionRx Limited (NYSE American: VNRX) today announced financial results and a business update for the third quarter ended September 30, 2017. Volition management will host a conference call tomorrow, November 10, at 8:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time to discuss these results. Conference call details may be found below.
Mr. Cameron Reynolds, President and Chief Executive Officer of Volition, said, "We have made fantastic progress this quarter, moving our clinical product development strongly forward in Asia, Europe and the U.S, and broadening our potential revenue base with our recently announced research kit sales. We have further expanded our talented scientific team, with four new hires to the R&D team, financially supported by the local government in Belgium." Mr. Reynolds added, "We continue to announce large trials at very affordable costs in our efforts to gain worldwide adoption of our products. We look forward to achieving our upcoming clinical and commercial milestones, while continuing to keep close control on our cash burn, which has remained relatively stable."
Third Quarter 2017 and Recent Company Highlights
Clinical
As the cornerstone of our frontline screening colorectal cancer test for the all-important U.S. market, we entered into an agreement to participate in a large, multi-center study with the Great Lakes New England Clinical Validation Center, funded by the U.S. National Cancer Institute's Early Detection Research Network.
The objective is to validate Volition's Nu.Q™ Colorectal Cancer Screening Test in a large, asymptomatic population for U.S. regulatory purposes.
The study provides approximately 13,500 asymptomatic screening samples of people aged 50 or over who have not previously undergone screening or a diagnostic colonoscopy.
The study will come at a cost of no more than $3 million, paid in equal, quarterly installments.
Intellectual Property
We secured four additional patents, in the U.S., Europe, Mexico and Australia, further solidifying Volition's intellectual property portfolio worldwide.
The patents are complementary to those previously granted. Volition now has 5 granted patents in the U.S. and 8 more patents in other territories.
Operational
In line with our goals to best utilize our Nucleosomics® platform and to broaden our revenue base, we announced the initial order of a bespoke Nu.QTM clinical research use only kit from a large multi-national pharmaceutical company together with plans to launch a range of Nucleosomics® clinical research use only kits in the first half of 2018.The kits based on our proprietary Nucleosomics® technology are expected to:
allow researchers to explore patterns of epigenetic modifications in circulating nucleosomes across a broad range of clinical applications including cancers, inflammatory and infectious diseases. The kits can be used for many purposes, for example as an aid to drug development and treatment selection.
represent the first revenue from the Nu.QTM platform and potentially provide an additional licensing revenue stream beyond the commercialization of our blood-based cancer tests on the same platform of assays.
We commenced a project to investigate the use of Nucleosomics® to purify or enrich nucleosomes from cancer. This aims to provide purified circulating tumor DNA to help address the main technology barrier in this emergent field of cancer diagnostics.
We were awarded $1.5 million in non-dilutive funding from SOFINEX and the Walloon Region of Belgium, bringing the total amount of non-dilutive funding from various agencies in the region to nearly $2.5 million
Third Quarter 2017 and Other Financial Results
For the three months ended September 30, 2017, Volition reported a net loss of $3.89 million, or $0.15 per share. This compares to a net loss of $3.48 million, or $0.15 per share in the third quarter of 2016.
Cash and cash equivalents as of September 30, 2017 totaled $13.84 million, compared with $12.53 million as of September 30, 2016.
Upcoming Milestones
Volition is targeting several important clinical and commercial milestones, including:
Selection of the panel for our frontline Nu.QTM Colorectal Cancer Screening Test by the end of 2017. This panel will be su...
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