About the project
Dear 2A Pharma Shareholders,
As you all know, the latest investment round was closed on 16 August, all funds were received last Thursday, the 31st of August. The round was slightly oversubscribed so we achieved our target of raising SEK 3,999,760 by issuing 14,705 new shares as authorised by the last general meeting of shareholders.
As we now have 17 shareholders in 4 different countries, we have moved the share register from Excel to an online solution accessible by all shareholders. We chose the service eaktiebok.se which was established in 2014 and is run by the Malmö based company FinReg Solutions, which in turn is a subsidiary of the Spotlight Group, the company that runs the Swedish Spotlight Stock Exchange, formerly known as Aktietorget.
You will all shortly receive an invitation to log into eaktiebok.se where you can see your holding in 2A Pharma AB. Please let me know if you do not receive the login within a day or two, or if you face technical problem so we can get the issues resolved. My own experience is that the system seems to prefer Chrome over Safari, so if you are an Apple Mac user, it may be worth trying to log in using Chrome in case you face technical issues.
Our bank, SEB, have issued the certificate confirming that the new capital was paid into our account. That is required for registering the new shares with the Swedish Bolagsverket, and this should now happen within the next week or so.
The new board of directors elected at the AGM met for the first time on 22 August 2023. The board now consists of Peter Lainevool (Chair), John Nieland, Søren Nielsen, and Preben Bruun-Nyzell.
And now to the plans for the coming period. You may recall the project Gantt chart that was included in the presentation of our anti-cancer vaccine targeting EpCAM:
The project has now kicked off and we are ramping up laboratory activities to produce the batch of the vaccine that will be used in animal studies. As you can see from the Gantt chart, the first three months of the project will be dedicated to the production activities. As our vaccine is a biological product and the vaccine particles grow in human embryonic kidney cells, there is very limited scope for speeding up the production process. In one of the next investor updates, we are planning a peek into the laboratory with an overview of the production process.
In addition to the vaccine production, we are working with our chosen contract research organisations to plan the coming studies, booking slot times in their facilities, and planning the ordering of animals and required materials. We will also prepare the filing of a new patent application to protect the EpCAM vaccine IP.
OTHER
In this update there are only two other items that we would like to draw your attention to:
As at least our Swedish investor knows, the Swedish krona has virtually tanked against other currencies, including the Euro and thereby the Danish krone. As 2A Pharma is a Swedish company with Swedish krona denominated funding, but with significant expenses to suppliers outside of Sweden, a further deterioration of the krona, especially against the Euro and Danish krona will adversely impact the company’s purchasing power. The official Swedish Riksbank exchange rates today were 1.597657 against the Danish krone, 11.9139 against the Euro and 11.1237 against the US Dollar. We will monitor the exchange rate and report back if it becomes necessary to take action in case of further deterioration of the currency.
On a more cheery note, I just want to highlight one positive news story: the Danish cancer vaccine company IO Biotech announced on the 8th of July that they had raised USD75m, or approximately 835m Swedish krona in a private placement to fund further development of their anti-cancer vaccines. IO Biotech is a much larger, clinical stage and Nasdaq listed company, so there is no immediate comparison with 2A Pharma, but it is a nice anecdotal indication of significant investor interest in the field of immune-modulating cancer vaccines.
With that, I would like to thank you for your attention and for your support of 2A Pharma! We shall return in about a month’s time with an update on the company’s activities and plans.
