The board of MedTech Achilles Therapeutics is proposing a members’ solvent voluntary liquidation.
The London-headquartered firm, which has an office in Philadelphia and facilities at Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, sold some of its technology assets to AstraZeneca late last year for $12m.
Achilles, founded in 2016, was developing precision T cell therapies that target clonal neoantigens – protein markers unique to each individual that are present on the surface of a cancer cell and can be detected by the immune system.
Should shareholders back the proposals, it is expected that approximately £1.20 to £1.32 per share would be returned to them. At the close of the markets yesterday, the value of each share was around £1.09.
Last year Achilles fell foul of Nasdaq rules around minimum share price value after its valuation fell through the floor in 2022 and never recovered. It also announced that it was stopping work on its clinical-phase cell therapy as its “studies in lung cancer and melanoma have not met our goals for commercial viability”.
Achilles, led by CEO Dr Iraj Ali, employed more than 200 people at the end of 2023.
The assets acquired by AstraZeneca include the commercial license of data and samples from its TRACERx Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer study.
TRACERx, led by Professor Charles Swanton at University College London, is one of the largest tumour evolution studies to generate deep sequencing multi-region and multi-time-point genetic data from over 3,200 tumor samples from over 800 lung cancer patients.
AstraZeneca also took over as sponsor of Achilles’ Material Acquisition Platform, and received tumour samples and data already collected – namely tissue and blood from nearly 300 cancer patients undergoing cancer surgery across lung, melanoma, head and neck, renal, bladder and breast.
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