OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals, a Baton Rouge-based clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, says it’s finalizing an acquisition of Mexican specialty drug maker Vitel Laboratorios S.A. and expects to complete the transaction in the second week of January.
The acquisition will be structured as an all-stock deal with both companies contributing equity interests into a newly created trust, resulting in Vitel operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of OncBioMune, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Full financial details of the deal have not been disclosed.
OncBioMune President and Chief Financial Officer Andrew Kucharchuk says the acquisition will open up the Central and South American markets for the firm, which has developed an immunotherapy cancer vaccine called ProscaVax to treat prostate cancer.
Clinical studies for the vaccine—developed in OncBioMune’s local lab—currently are taking place in both the United States and Mexico, which has already awarded a patent for ProscaVax. OncBioMune says it also has obtained a European patent for the vaccine.
With the Vitel buy, OncBioMune’s will broaden its portfolio of drugs and increase its chances of attracting capital from Wall Street investors, Kucharchuk says. The acquisition also will pave the way for the publicly traded over-the-counter firm to get the cancer vaccine on the market in Mexico by late 2017, he adds, which will hopefully transform OncBioMune into a revenue-generating company.
Kucharchuk says Vitel, which currently has two over-the-counter drugs on the market, is valued between $8.5 million and $9 million. He expects the acquisition to raise OncBioMune’s value to $25 million, based on the company’s stock price.
Even though ProscaVax is expected to make it to the market in Mexico first, that doesn’t mean OncBioMune isn’t seeking approval of the vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“We’re not writing off the FDA,” Kucharchuk says, noting a phase one clinical study in the United States has already been conducted at the University of California-San Diego Moores Cancer Center and Veterans Hospital. The drug, he says, proved to be effective as 14 of the 17 patients enrolled were in remission or did not biochemically progress.
A phase two clinical study of ProscaVax will begin at Harvard Health System early next year and will include 120 patients, Kucharchuk says. If all goes well and the FDA approves the drug, ProscaVax could be on the market in the United States in 2019 or 2020, Kucharchuk says. Meanwhile, an additional clinical study of ProscaVax is taking place in Mexico City.
OncBioMune and Vitel entered into a shareholders agreement to launch OncBioMune Mexico to develop and commercialize ProscaVax in Mexico and Central and Latin America, SEC documents say.
The partnership, which was sparked when OncBioMune CEO Jonathan Head happened to sit next to Vitel CEO Manuel Cosme Odabachian on a flight, eventually led to the acquisition, Kucharchuk says. Both companies were looking for access to capital, he adds. Odabachian will join OncBioMune’s executive team and oversee development and commercialization efforts south of the U.S. border, the company says.
—Alexandria Burris
