The Board of Kuala Innovations Limited has announced that it has subscribed for a 3.5 per cent. interest in Delaware incorporated private company Intensity Therapeutics, Inc.
The Company has subscribed for 250,000 Preferred Series A Shares of Intensity Therapeutics (“Subscription Shares”) at a price of US$2.00 per Subscription Share, for total cash consideration of US$500,000.
Intensity Therapeutics is currently under-going a “Series A Fundraising” to raise approximately US$5 million. It is anticipated that, on completion of the Series A Funding round Intensity Therapeutics will have a post-money market capitalisation of approximately US$19.0 million (based on US$2.00 per share).
Intensity Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on cancer immunotherapy. Intensity’s novel technology has the potential to transform the lives of patients with cancer. Intensity’s approach allows for the administration of drugs directly into cancerous tumours. This method could create high quality antigens from the patients’ own attenuated (killed) tumours to promote immune activation. The immune system, once trained against the patient’s own cancer, can then could seek and attack the remaining cancer cells throughout the body to potentially put the patient into remission and prevent the cancer’s recurrence.
Intensity’s lead product INT230-6 has demonstrated remarkable activity in multiple animal cancer models. The Company was awarded a Collaborative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the US National Cancer Institute of the American National Institute of Health to better characterize the mechanism of this technology. The National Cancer Institute has reproduced and confirmed Intensity’s findings.
Currently, early detection coupled with surgery and chemotherapy is the most effective treatment against cancer. However, for late-stage cancer patients, combinations of chemotherapy or targeted therapy, immunotherapy ablation or radiation are less effective. Current therapies also require administration directly into the bloodstream (systemically) whereby the drug circulates throughout the body damaging healthy tissue. Often, due to side effects on normal tissue, the doses are limited and only a fraction of the drug reaches the tumour with even less of the drug getting into the actual cancer cells. Intensity’s localized administration approach should lead to reduced systemic exposure significantly reducing toxicity. The activation of the immune system against the cancer allows for the system killing power to attack the untreated tumors and invisible metastases.
Intensity has a strong management team with considerable experience in the field of cancer immunotherapy. The Company is being led by founder Lewis Bender who is currently President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Bender has over 20 years of biotechnology and pharmaceutical executive management experience. Prior to founding Intensity, Mr. Bender was the CEO of the publically traded personalized medicine firm, Interleukin Genetics, Inc. (ILIU). Mr. Bender is joined by Ian Walters, MD as Chief Medical Officer who is a veteran oncology drug developer, formerly from Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he managed physicians overseeing the international development of several oncology compounds.
KUL : Kuala takes stake in Intensity Therapeutics