Fusion Antibodies, a Belfast-based contract research firm, has secured shareholder approval for a €3 million rights issue.
The London-listed company, which was originally spun-out of Queen’s University, announced a share placing on April 28th to raise money for several planks of research, including an expansion of its mammalian antibody library to include Covid-19.
While it had pre-existing authority from shareholders to raise £2 million, it needed additional consent for the other £1 million, which it secured at an agm on Friday.
The additional 3.3 million shares, issued at 90p each, will be admitted for trading on May 20th, bringing the total number of ordinary shares in circulation on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange to 25 million.
Its shares are currently trading at 107p.
Established in 2001, Fusion provides a range of antibody engineering services for the development of antibodies for both therapeutic drug and diagnostic applications.
“Since 2012 it has sequenced and expressed over 250 antibodies and completed over 100 humanisation projects, and has an international blue-chip client base which has included eight of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies by revenue,” the company said in a statement issued after the agm.
The global monoclonal antibody therapeutics market was valued at $135.4 billion in 2018, and is forecast to surpass $212.6 billion in 2022. In 2017 seven of the world’s 10 top-selling drugs were antibody-based therapeutics, with the combined annual sales of these drugs exceeding $63.2 billion.
