Poolbeg Pharma will focus on plans to submit its key pipeline drug to an early efficacy trial this year, after merger talks with Nasdaq-listed peer Hookipa Pharma fell through last week, its chairman, Cathal Friel, has said.
“We have always had a Plan B,” said Mr Friel, adding that this centres on the development of Poolbeg’s POLB 001, a potentially breakthrough pill to protect against certain negative reactions to cancer immunotherapies.
Mr Friel said the clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, in which he owns a 7.4 per cent stake, received “very, very strong validation from big biotech funds” for the commercial potential of the treatment during a recent roadshow in North America that had been organised by investment bank Oppenheimer & Co.
Poolbeg said in an investor presentation that it expects to enter a clinical trial collaboration and supply agreement with “a large pharma company” as it sees initial patients taking doses of the drug in a so-called phase two assessment in the second half of this year. Such trials are designed to determine the effectiveness of a treatment after safety has been established in phase one trials.
Mr Friel said that Poolbeg remains keen to do deals, even after Hookipa pulled out of a tie-up. “We built companies around deals,” he said, adding that the Nasdaq listing it would have accessed as part of a tie-up with Hookipa would have been “a nice thing, but not a must-have”.
An all-share deal was being engineered as a reverse takeover that would technically have meant Hookipa take over Poolbeg, even though shareholders in the latter were to end up with a 55 per cent stake.
“We were disappointed by Hookipa’s decision. But we were always nervous that it might pull out at the last minute, so we designed it that it would be the buyer, leaving it with most of the bid costs,” Mr Friel said.
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Shares in Poolbeg have fallen 43 per cent since it first revealed in early January that it was in merger discussions with Hookipa. Some 15 per cent of the decline came after Hookipa disclosed on Thursday evening that it did not plan to proceed with an offer. Hookipa’s shares have fallen almost 3 per cent since Wall Street close on Thursday.
Analysts had expected a tie-up to accelerate a restructuring of the legacy Hookipa business. Shares in the US company, where Irish life sciences industry veteran Julie O’Neill is chairwoman, slumped by almost 76 per cent in 2023 as the company went through senior management changes and announced three rounds of large job cuts.
The investor roadshow related to a planned $30 million (€28.9 million) equity raise that was to take place immediately after a combination between Poolbeg and Hookipa. This will not now go ahead.
