A company that is making a cancer drug derived from broccoli intends to float on the London stock exchange later this month.
Evgen hopes to raise up to £20m to fund intermediate clinical studies of its experimental tablet Sulforadex as a treatment for brain haemorrhage as well as prostate and breast cancer.
The Liverpool-based biotech firm has synthesised the naturally occurring compound, sulforaphane, derived from broccoli and other greens. The drug’s safety and tolerability has already been tested on 47 healthy volunteers. It will also conduct preclinical trials on animals for multiple sclerosis.
While the health benefits of eating broccoli are well known, it has been tricky to turn the specific anti-cancer agent into a tablet. A company spokesman said: “It is amazingly unstable and has to be kept at minus 20 degrees. The new excitement is after all this academic work that has been done that somebody stabilised it in a form that can be turned into a medicine. I would have thought there is a reasonable chance that it will be quite successful.”
Three clinical trials will be conducted from next year in Manchester and Southampton in the UK and Seattle in the US, reporting results in 2016. If the brain haemorrhage studies go well, Evgen could get early approval from regulators as it is focusing on the reduction of cognitive impairment, which bypasses usual rules in the US and EU as it is classed as a rare disease. Evgen was founded in 2007 by former Boots director Barry Clare, who runs the firm as executive chairman with chief executive Stephen Franklin – who previously ran Provexis, set up in 1999 to harness the blood pressure lowering properties of tomato extract. Evgen plans to join the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, with its shares due to start trading in mid-December.
