E-therapeutics raises £22.5m to expand capabilities and pipeline

E-therapeutics has completed a placing, subscription and retail offer via PrimaryBid, it announced on Friday, conditionally raising gross proceeds of £22.5m to help expand its drug discovery and development capabilities and asset pipeline.

The AIM-traded firm said that in total, 93,750,000 new shares would be issued at the placing price of 24p each.

It said it would use the funds raised to facilitate a number of initiatives, with a focus on expanding its proprietary, disease-agnostic drug discovery and development platform capabilities, as well as its asset pipeline.

Specifically, it said it would use the money to generate experimental hepatocyte-specific proprietary data for its in-silico discovery engine, and advance two or three RNAi therapeutic programmes through preclinical development.

It would also aim to complete a first-in-human clinical study for one RNAi asset to provide additional validation, and further develop its computational platform and general working capital, including team expansion, while also exploring RNAi in other cell types.

E-therapeutics said that under the placing, 81,208,333 shares would be issued, raising £19.49m, and under the subscription, 8,708,334 shares would be issued, raising £2.09m.

Finally, under the retail offer, 3,833,333 shares would be issued, raising gross proceeds of £0.92m.

“The fundraise is conditional on shareholder approval being received at the annual general meeting, which is expected to be held on or around 16 June,” the board said in its statement.

At 1325 BST, shares in E-therapeutics were down 6.45% at 25.54p.