Evgen Pharma's loss widens amid excitement over cancer treatment

Evgen Pharma’s shares stumbled on Wednesday after its interim loss before tax expanded, though the company was “delighted” by progress in treatment developments.

For the six-month period ended 30 September, the clinical stage drug development company’s loss before tax expanded to £1.8m from £1.7m in the same period last year, which was in line with expectations.

Cash and cash equivalents at the period end stood at £2.2m, roughly level with the same point last year after an October fundraising netted Evgen £0.75m.

The AIM traded company also revealed encouraging data in recent preliminary reports from pre-clinical programmes in triple negative breast cancer, glioblastoma and ischaemic stroke.

Stephen Franklin, chief executive of Evgen Pharma, said: "We were delighted with the positive breast cancer interim data showing good tolerability and efficacy in this very difficult to treat patient population and are hopeful that these trends will be maintained in the final analysis."

Franklin added that the board was “excited” for the company’s near-term prospects given that final read-outs of the STEM and SAS clinical trials are due in the first and second quarters of 2019 respectively.

STEM is a multi-centre, Phase IIa clinical trial for the company’s SFX-01 breast cancer treatment, while SAS is a Phase IIb clinical study where SFX-01 is administered days in advance of the ischaemia that follows the initial haemorrhaging of a stroke.

"We have also been encouraged by our discussions with leading academics and clinicians who have access to grant funding, and who wish to use SFX-01 for new investigator-initiated trials in non-core indications such as NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis), a subset of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease," said Franklin.

Evgen Pharma’s shares were down 10.45% at 15.00p at 1124 GMT.