Advanced Oncotherapy raises £10m to fund first proton clinic in London

AIM-listed Advanced Oncotherapy raised £10m from a share placing to fund the development of the first proton therapy centre in London.

The company raised the funds through the issue of 10m shares of 25p each to a new price of 100p per share to new and existing shareholders. The company will provide an open offer to existing investors under same terms as the subscription.

The £10m will be used to continue development of the company’s LIGHT (linac image guided hadron technology) system, at the first proton therapy centre in London’s Harley Street.

The funds raised will also go to the collaboration with manufacturer Thales, to produce eight LIGHT systems a year.

The subscription was led by senior management, board members, and MK Trust, a Japanese financial institution, which subscribed for 5m shares or 7.3% of the issued share capital.

MK Trust is owned by Miky Kamabra, who will become a senior advisor to the company and oversee its development in the Asian market.

The shares will be admitted to trade on AIM on 7 October and following admission the share capital with comprise of 68.7m shares, none in treasury.

Chief executive Michael Sinclair said the company had made progress with the development of the LIGHT systems and has bought production forward with Thales, which the capital raised will help fund.

He added: "Given the huge opportunities that we see in the Asian market we are delighted to receive the support of MK Trust in this subscription and we believe the contribution from Miky Kambara to our commercial plans for Asia will be highly valuable”.

In May, the company signed an agreement with a fund advised by Metric Capital Partners , a pan-European private capital fund manager, to invest £24m in a financing facility to support the the installation of the LIGHT machine in Harley Street, and was conditional on a future £25m injection to fund a manufacturing base for the LIGHT system.

The company agreed with Metric to waive this condition and to make the full £24m available for drawdown, subject to completion of the subscription and implementation of an additional financing plan.

Shares in Advanced Oncotherapy were down 2.75% to 109.89p at 1042 BST.