Even before today, investors appeared to be placing a lot of faith in the New Brunswick, N.J.-based biotech. After today's run-up, it carries a market cap of $8 million. That's despite net losses totaling $33 million since the company's start-up in 1998. Those include $1.62 million, amounting to 9 cents a share, that Senesco lost in the quarter ending in December.
Senesco's value is in the genetic technology it is developing, for agricultural and medical uses.
It's difficult to get excited about much of anything in the current market. But some investors were still pleased with the results of a study performed on mice for Senesco's cancer drug candidate, SNS-01. The study found that the drug could shrink tumors in mice by as much 91%. And the mice could tolerate doses of the drug that were two to four times what was necessary to shrink the tumors before showing toxic effects.
But for Senesco, neither media stardom nor the end of 2009 are the finish line. The company has years of study and multiple FDA trials ahead of it before SNS-01 could be offered for humans and Senesco could even begin to generate revenue.
The company has no where near the financial resources to get that point on its own. As of Dec. 31, it had cash and liquid investments of only $3.62 million, according to a filing with the SEC. Senesco estimates that that would be enough to allow it to continue operating only through July.
Raising capital is of course harder than usual at the moment and any fundraising that Sensco does is likely to be dilutive to its current investors.
The company raised $10 million back in June in a private placement of convertible notes to two investors. At least one of those isn't likely to be around for any fundraising Senesco needs in the future, as $5 million of the note offering was made to Stanford Venture Capital Holdings, the venture capital arm Stanford Financial.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment