Shares in London-listed biotech stock Cizzle Biotechnology LON:CIZ were on the move this morning following an announcement of a full commercial agreement to develop and market its proprietary early lung cancer diagnostic tests in China. Cizzle shares were trading at 3.17p at time of writing, having jumped from 2.25p yesterday, a 40% gain.
The agreement follows a memorandum of understanding signed last year with the International Co-Innovation Centre for Advanced Medical Technology (iCCAMT) and Shenzhen Intelliphecy Life Technologies Co Ltd. The deal will see Cizzle Biotechnology receiving a 10% royalty on the sales of all products and services using its proprietary CIZ1B technology and from payment for monoclonal antibodies and reagents.
Who is Cizzle Biotechnology?
Cizzle Biotechnology is a spin- out from the University of York, founded in 2006 around the work of Professor Dawn Coverley and colleagues. Its proof-of-concept prototype test is based on the ability to detect a stable plasma biomarker, a variant of CIZ1 known as CIZ1B. CIZ1 is a naturally occurring cell nuclear protein involved in DNA replication, and the targeted CIZ1B variant is highly correlated with early stage lung cancer.
The China partners will be solely responsible for funding all activities in China, including development, clinical trials, manufacturing and distribution. Cizzle said the intention is to start initial development within 60 days of the company supplying its immunoreagents to the China partners, which is expected in Q2 of this year.
“As reported in November 2021, when we signed our MOU with iCCAMT and Intelliphecy, lung cancer in China is a huge social and economic challenge, especially because of the difficulties in being able to detect it early enough to make clinical intervention effective,” said Allan Syms, Executive Chairman of Cizzle Biotechnology. “Our Chinese partners will be financing all activities in China in exchange for providing us with important and repeatable royalty revenues and covering the costs for all key reagents and our proprietary monoclonal antibodies.”
An initial pilot covering 300 patients is planned at China’s premier cancer hospitals, which will allow for a true representative patient cohort to be included and, if successful, is expected to accelerate adoption and product rollout in China. Lung cancer is the one with the highest incidence in China. The fact that many lung cancer patients are diagnosed with advanced disease hampers therapeutic efficiency and patient survival. There is an urgent need for early lung cancer detection in the country.
“This agreement represents a significant opportunity to bring early and cost-effective cancer detection to the people of China,” explained Dr Hui Wu, CEO and Founder of iCCAMT. “It is estimated that about 95.8 million people in China have a high risk of lung cancer and if screening was performed every three years, then more than 30 million tests per year would be required.”
At a target price of about £100 per test, the total available market for tests based on the CIZ1B biomarker would be £3 billion. Frost & Sullivan estimates the market size in China is US$5.7 billion. Wu reported that iCCAMT have already secured strong interest from its nationwide network of national clinical centres and key opinion leaders because of the promising results using the CIZ1B biomarker for lung cancer early detection in the UK. One of its first tasks is to commence pilot studies at the Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, National Cancer Centre, and Beijing Cancer Hospital, affiliated with Peking University.