IXICO secures £0.5m in new contracts for Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease imaging
Neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's can often be crippling for patients, family and friends.
However, in late 2023 there was a major medical breakthrough after the FDA approved two Alzheimer's drugs - Biogen’s Leqembi and Eli Lilly’s Kisunla. Both of them slow cognitive decline, but require regular brain scans to monitor possible side-effects.
Nonetheless, these early first-generation successes have triggered a surge of new neurological research, reflecting the enormous unmet need, where tens of millions of people die annually worldwide.
Enter (mrkcap £9.3m at 10p) - one of the world's leaders in the highly specialised assessment of brain scans - helping biopharma and CROs develop new drugs right from the test-tube, through to commercial launch and post-marketing surveillance.
What's more, today the company said that it has secured two more contracts worth a combined £0.5m for Alzheimer's (AD) and Huntington's (HD), which increase revenue cover and will be recognised within Sept FY25.
Here, the AD work is for a multinational biotechnology group to provide imaging reads and data analysis using the dataset from the Global Alzheimer's Platform Foundation's groundbreaking Bio-Hermes-001 study, of which is a partner.
And the second contract relates to a Phase 2 HD study for an existing US-based client that has subsequently deepened and extended its commercial partnership, utilising 's leading HD imaging platform 'IXIQ.Ai' to reanalyse data from a previous Phase 1 clinical trial.
CEO Bram Goorden commenting: "The AD trial is a significant win for IXICO in that it complements the Company's strategy of expanding neuroimaging biomarker analysis for partners into the clinical diagnostics market. Both the AD contract win, and new HD project, reflect the continued recognition of IXICO as a global neuroimaging market leader with an unrivalled biomarker technology advantage."
Elsewhere, house broker Cavendish has a target price of 24p/share and is forecasting Sept FY'25 sales and EBITDA to come in at £6.0m (£5.8m LY) and -£1.4m (£-1.7m) respectively, ending the period with £3m of net cash.
In terms of valuation, shares at 10p trade on an attractive 1.1x EV/sales - which looks far too cheap for a science-rich 'picks and shovels' play on the treatment of all things neurodegenerative disease.
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