QBiotics welcomes new investor to accelerate Drug development timelines

Biotech News: Queensland-based QBiotics, a life sciences company developing novel anticancer and wound healing pharmaceuticals, is pleased to announce a A$50 million placement of fully paid ordinary shares to TDM Growth Partners as a new cornerstone investor into the company.

QBiotics’ Managing Director and CEO, Dr Victoria Gordon said “We are delighted to have secured TDM Growth Partners as a cornerstone investor. Having developed our relationship over a number of years, we see TDM as a long-term partner that is closely aligned with our ethical and principled approach to the business of pharmaceutical development and commercialisation.

“This funding enables QBiotics to aggressively pursue our human drug development pipeline in both oncology and wound healing, support marketing of our veterinary pharmaceutical, STELFONTA and further strengthen the QBiotics team. It should enable a step change in the pace at which we can bring our programmes forward,” Dr Gordon said.

Co-Founder of TDM Growth Partners, Hamish Corlett commented “In the coming decades, some of the largest companies in the world will be biotechnology businesses which are being built today.  Despite having many of the world’s leading healthcare institutions and minds, only one stand-alone, global pharmaceutical biotech category leader has been founded in Australia – CSL. We believe QBiotics has the potential to be the second. This is a rare and special opportunity. We are excited to become shareholders of a company that could change the lives of many.”

The placement follows the recent news that QBiotics’ drug STELFONTA was approved as a veterinary pharmaceutical by the US Food and Drug Administration – Center for Veterinary Medicine for the treatment of all grades of non-metastatic mast cell tumours in dogs.

QBiotics has a “veterinary to human” drug development pipeline and is currently leveraging the STELFONTA evidence to investigate its active pharmaceutical ingredient, tigilanol tiglate, across a number of human oncology indications. Four monotherapy trials are either underway or in late-stage development in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma (Phase IB/IIA and Phase IIA), melanoma (Phase IIB) and soft tissue sarcoma (Phase IIA). In addition, a clinical trial combining tigilanol tiglate with an anti-PD-1 drug is currently being implemented.