VBL Therapeutics (Vascular Biogenics The Nasdaq trader reported that it did not meet the main goal of its ovarian cancer treatment trial. There was no significant difference between the treatment group and the control group, both in the measure of time until the tumor continued to develop, nor in the patients’ survival. them.
Prior to the announcement, the VBL share was traded at a price that embodies a value of $ 142 million for the company. Following the announcement, it crashed 78% in late trading on Wall Street.
VBL CEO and founder, Prof. Dror Hertz, said the trial of ovarian cancer would be discontinued. Existing from both of these trials and the broader information from the ovarian cancer trial, to see if the entire platform is suitable for further development.
The company has additional technology in development, for the treatment of inflammatory diseases. This product is expected to reach its first human trial in the last quarter of 2022, i.e. in the coming months. The company said it has enough money for about a year of trials.
Also failed in 2018 in an experiment to treat brain cancer
VBL was founded in 2000 by Haretz, a doctor at Sheba Hospital who also developed the company’s products. From the beginning, the company operated in two directions simultaneously – an anti-inflammatory product and a cancer product. In the cancer product it recorded in 2018 a failure in a clinical trial in brain cancer, but a retrospective analysis of the results convinced the company that it should still continue in this direction, in a slightly different approach.
Even before that it decided to abandon the field of development of anti-inflammatory drugs for the treatment of heart disease, despite its investment in the field, after the requirements for product development in this field became impossible for a small company.
Perhaps the best example of the company’s rapid recovery from a seemingly fatal blow was the company’s IPO in 2014, which has already been priced, but between pricing and closing one of the anchor investors retired, failing to transfer the money – a very rare affair. VBL did not give up, and launched a new IPO despite the image blow, and managed at the end of 2014 to complete the IPO at a value of $ 120 million. Although it originally asked for 220 million, at least that is how it managed to get into Nasdaq just before the IPO window for that period closed. About $ 200 million.