Opportunities Being Developed While the Situation with the PCA3
Prostate Cancer Test is Being Resolved
QUEBEC CITY, Oct. 30, 2014
/PRNewswire/ - DiagnoCure, Inc. (TSX: CUR) (OTCQX: DGCRF) today
reports on its initiatives designed to optimize Corporate value
moving forward. A number of opportunities are developing for
DiagnoCure's new multi-marker prostate cancer test and its colon
cancer staging test. Furthermore, even as the clinical community
continues to report positive results on DiagnoCure's PCA3 prostate
cancer marker, revenues are far from the Corporation's
expectations.
Indeed, as reported several times in this last year,
DiagnoCure's flagship prostate cancer marker, PCA3, continues to be
highly regarded by the clinical community as a useful tool for the
diagnosis and management of prostate cancer patients. Close to 40
scientific papers were published on PCA3 since the beginning of
2014 for a total of 233 publications since its introduction, all of
them supporting the clear advantages of PCA3 over other prostate
cancer tests.
Notwithstanding the important clinical utility of the PCA3 test,
the product has not penetrated the market at levels commensurate
with DiagnoCure's expectations. The Corporation believes that this
could have been the result of a lack of a substantive marketing
investment by the Corporation's exclusive PCA3 licensee, even
though over the last year DiagnoCure's management team has exerted
a multi-faceted effort aimed at galvanizing a stronger commitment
to market the PCA3 test from its licensee. Consequently,
DiagnoCure, as previously reported, has pursued an unsuccessful
initiative to purchase the entire Prostate Oncology Business Unit
from its licensee in order to regain all commercial PCA3 rights and
fully exploit its potential. Nevertheless, as a result of continued
interactions with the Corporation's licensee, DiagnoCure's Board of
Directors and management team trust that a beneficial outcome to
the current situation could emerge, which would favorably impact
the Corporation's revenue stream.
In parallel, DiagnoCure's management team has investigated
numerous opportunities to in-license, acquire new technologies or
establish partnerships to develop new products or offer new
services. However, all these efforts were requiring significant
investment, exceeding the current cash or financing available to
the Corporation for such development projects.
As a result, effective October 31,
2014, a number of DiagnoCure's employees will be temporarily
laid off and the few remaining, have all accepted a significant
reduction of their working time and related compensation until
further notice. Moreover, the President and Chief Medical Officer
as well as all Board members have also accepted a significant
reduction of their compensation.
Considering the above and because positive results of the
500-patient clinical trial of DiagnoCure's new multi-marker
prostate cancer test ("PCP") will soon be released, the Board of
Directors of the Corporation has decided to focus business
development efforts on the out-licensing of both the PCP test and
the Previstageâ GCC colon cancer test while
simultaneously reducing operating expenses. As previously
reported, a licensing agreement was recently signed with Shuwen
Biotech for the marketing and sale of the GCC test in China. Moreover, discussions with other
interested parties are underway for other territories. The
Corporation has also begun discussions for the sale or
out-licensing of the PCP test as well.
"During these last months, our team had exerted an enormous
effort to find common ground for success with DiagnoCure's PCA3
licensing partner. However, we feel our partner's marketing
priorities have remained focused on areas other than prostate
cancer. The efforts we made did help to create a momentum that we
are confident will lead to a positive outcome. The current
situation and financing available to support other
cancer-product-development initiatives required us to take the
current decision," said Dr. Yves
Fradet, Chairman of the Board.
Dr. Vincent Zurawski,
DiagnoCure's Lead Director added, "During this last year, our team
has pursued and is still working on a number of opportunities under
terms of non-disclosure agreements, which do not allow us to
provide more information to the public. For this entire time, we
have been implementing a clear plan as to what actions would need
to be taken at various time points. This plan has culminated with
the current decision, because potential arrangements associated
with the opportunities being pursued could not be completed by a
date that was predetermined by our board. Until now it was
necessary to maintain our already depleted staff to complete the
clinical trial on PCP and also because all those human resources
were needed to implement the opportunities being pursued. Now that
we have completed the PCP clinical trial and reached our
predetermined deadline without additional business arrangements in
place, it has become necessary to take the next steps in the plan
as reported in this release. Our entire board regrets that our
decisions will negatively impact loyal and longstanding employees
of DiagnoCure, but we believe that the decision we have made
provide the best chance to optimize corporate value."
About DiagnoCure
DiagnoCure (TSX: CUR; OTCQX: DGCRF) is a life sciences
corporation that develops and provides molecular and genomic tests
to support effective clinical decisions enabling personalized
medicine in oncology. Previstageâ GCC and the
Corporation new multimarker prostate cancer test are currently
available for licensing. The Corporation has granted a worldwide
exclusive license on PCA3 for the development and commercialization
of a prostate cancer test which is now commercialized in
Europe under CE mark and is
approved for commercialization in Canada and the
United States. For more information, please visit
www.diagnocure.com.
Forward‐looking statements
This release contains forward‐looking statements that involve
known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions that may
cause actual results to differ materially from those expected. By
their very nature, forward‐looking statements are based on
expectations and hypotheses and also involve risks and
uncertainties, known and unknown, many of which are beyond
DiagnoCure's control. As a result, investors are cautioned not to
place undue reliance on these forward‐looking statements. The
forward-looking statements regarding the outcome of research and
development projects, clinical studies and future revenues are
based on management expectations. In addition, the reader is
referred to the applicable general risks and uncertainties
described in DiagnoCure's most recent Annual Information Form under
the heading "Risk Factors". DiagnoCure undertakes no obligation to
publicly update or revise any forward‐looking statements contained
herein unless required by the applicable securities laws and
regulations.
SOURCE DiagnoCure inc.