Publication: Daily Express

Date: 29 March 2005

Words: 406

King’s College set to make a million from company float

A university spin-out which is developing treatments for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases is planning to float on Aim. 

Proximagen is seeking to raise £13.5 million through a placing at 148p a share, a move giving the company a market value of up to £30 million. 

It is being spun out of the University of London’s King’s College, which stands to gain around £1 million by selling part of its stake in the firm.

The college has more than 25 years experience of research into diseases that affect the brain.

The float is also set to make a paper millionaire of its academic founder; non-executive director and chief scientific officer Professor Peter Jenner.  He will own nearly 9 per cent of the company after the float.

The money raised will be used to turn four of his programmes into actual treatments to help Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s sufferers.

Jenner is not promising a cure for the diseases but his company hopes one day to treat some of the most severe symptoms and the side-effects associated with them. 

One programme is focused on treating the side-effects of the world’s most widely used Parkinson’s drug levodopa, which produces involuntary movements that worsen as the disease progresses.

Another is designed to exploit a protein found in the brain which helps protect nerve cells from the disease. 

Proximagen also wants to license a technology that could treat all diseases where the brain cells are damaged, such as Alzheimer’s, motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s.

Should these treatments prove successful in initial trials, Proximagen intends to licence bigger companies to take the drugs through the full-blown expensive clinical trials.

To cover day-to-day administrative expenses, the company is already working with several major pharmaceuticals companies to help them develop their own drugs.

Its partners include some of the biggest and best-known groups in the world, such as GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Novartis.

Investment in the group so far has also come from the specialist investor IP2IPO as well as several business angels, the academics themselves and King’s College. 

IP2IPO specialises in identifying suitable technologies to form the basis of spin-out companies and it will own more than 20 per cent of the company after the float.

Proximagen’s chief executive, Kenneth Mulvany says: “We look forward to making further progress – with the objective of adding value for shareholders and improving the quality of life for patients”.