In summary,
James Garner took on what was, frankly a basket case of an ASX listed biotech (formerly named Novogen Limited) and recreated the company around GDC-0084 which they licensed in. The drug inow has the name Paxsalisib. Paxsalisib is a brain penetrable PI3K pathway inhibitor. The drug is currently under multiple phase I & II trials. (see graphic). The company has only fully funded one phase II Trial. All the others are being funded by external organisations.
More recently, he licensed in EVT801, which is being tested against tumors.
On the scientific front Kazia has done well to get the drug into so many clinical trials as an ASX microcap. There are some very highly credentialed internationally renowed brain cancer researchers who have been instrumental in getting the drug into clinical trials. Whether the drug gets registered and commercialised will depend on the science and the data.
As mentioned above James Garner along with the board, in my opinion, has not handled the capital raising as well as I would have liked. There were key opportunities they missed to take advantage of a high share price to raise early instead of leaving it to the last minute. Sure, biotechs are worst than mining explorers in constantly needing to hit capital markets for funding. It's not easy. At the end of the day the Chairperson and the whole board bear responsibility for capital management IMHO, especially where the CEO has strengths in other areas as a scientist.
Kazia set up an "at the market" funding facility with Oppenheimer & Co about a year ago to issue equity on NASDAQ to raise funds. The timing was unfortunate as the biotech sector crashed on NASDAQ over 2022. Whenever Kazia hit Oppenheimer for funds, they dumped the stock on the NASDAQ and the share price, given the overall sector sentiment took a thrashing.
Regarding the market perception that Paxsalisib failed the AGILE adaptive Gioblastoma pivotal trial. All we know is that Paxsalisib did not recruit into the second phase of the trial. The patients that were recruited into phase one continued. It is a multi drug, multi arm, adaptive (using stochastic statistical analysis) shared control group trial. No data has been released yet for the Paxsalisib arm. Early data from childhood DIPG brain cancer combined drug trials has been encouraging. I thought it important to set the facts straight on that. Enough about Paxsalisib.
James Garner did not list Kazia on NASDAQ. Novogen was already trading on NASDAQ when he took over. Really, I don't think the NASDAQ listing has been that material to capital raising although it might account for the high share price during the everything speculative bubble boom the NASDAQ went through during the COVID stimulus. Interestingly, Kazia abandoned the "at the market" funding scheme on NASDAQ and instead hit existing share holders for its latest round of capital raising which I think was much more successful as less of those shares have ended up on market.
Kazia also pivoted key personnel towards the commerciation of Paxsalisib a while ago. They have already sold the rights to the China market. I think they were hoping for positive data out of the GBM Agile trial earlier, although they new that the trial was open ended. So the timing of things has not worked out as expected which also hasn't helped with the capital raising. That's life.
Kazia's NASDAQ depository interests are traded 1:10 (One NASDAQ KZIA to each ten underlying KZA ASX listed shares). The share price has recovered such that KZIA is no longer breaching NASDAQs minimum ($1) share price rule.
In conclusion, my observation from his time at Kazia is that hopefully James Garner has gained more experience in tapping capital markets from his time at Kazia. He is competent at managing the clinical trial process. The key success he had at Kazia was getting Kazia into multiple trials funded by external institutions. Although my shareholding in ANP is smaller than my KZA holding, I am comfortable taking the reigns at ANP. He appears to be a career executive. He didn't reach very deep into his own pocket to purchase shares when at Kazia but picked up the performance rights through his employment plan.
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