ValiRx forms new majority-owned breast cancer subsidiary

Women’s health and cancer therapeutics company ValiRx announced the formation of a new partially-owned subsidiary, Cytolytix, on Monday, which had signed an intellectual property licence agreement with King's College London (KCL).

The AIM-traded firm said Cytolytix had been established to progress the triple negative breast cancer project, ‘CLX001’, through preclinical development to a stage of readiness for clinical trials.

It described CLX001 as a peptide in a nanoparticle formulation that was initially developed for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, with potential for disease expansion into ovarian and other difficult-to-treat solid tumour cancers.

CLX001 was designed for “precision destruction” of cancer cells to avoid excessive side effects.

The company said the novel mechanism of action allowed for broad application across various cancers, as it targeted the tumour microenvironment and would not require specific cell markers or specific gene mutations for activity.

ValiRx holds 60% of the shares in Cytolytix, with the remaining 40% split between KCL at 20%, and the two academic inventors of CLX001, Martin Ulmschneider and Charles Chen.

Under the intellectual property licence, ValiRx would provide the necessary funding to Cytolytix for further preclinical development of the technology.

The licence would also cover milestone and royalty payments between the parties should the project be sub-licensed in the future.

As the major shareholder, ValiRx said it would lead the development of CLX001 with oversight provided by the Cytolytix board, consisting of representatives from ValiRx, KCL and the inventors.

“I am really pleased to announce the launch of Cytolytix today,” said ValiRx chief executive officer Dr Suzy Dilly.

“This project is the first output of the strategy we launched in 2020 to bring new academic projects into our pipeline and is an excellent example of the innovative science being carried out in university departments.

“Expanding our pipeline with CLX001 is an important step towards diversifying our pipeline and ensuring innovative research and development remains the foundation of our company.”

At 1457 BST, shares in ValiRx were up 5.44% at 15.02p.

Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.