Dive Brief:
- UK-based Rasna Therapeutics acquired Active With Me, Inc. a Canadian company, in a reverse merger transaction this week. The new company will trade on NASDAQ-OTC under the ticker ATVM.
- Rasna Therapeutics is a development-stage oncology company that is focused on therapies for the treatment of leukemia and lymphoma. The company's developmental strategy is based on modulation of LSD1 and NPM1 molecular targets. The company is aiming to have a lead candidate by next year.
- Active With Me was founded in 2012, and went public in 2013. The company's primary focus has been providing online information about activity-based travel.
Dive Insight:
By undertaking a reverse merger Rasna Therapeutics has found a much easier route to becoming a publicly traded company. Although Rasna is still in early-stage development of its therapies, the company has a world-class management team with deep roots in the biotech world. .
Rasna was founded in 2013 by Gabriele Cerrone, a biotech entrepreneur, along with two biotech superstars—Roberto Pellicciari, the medicinal chemist who founded Intercept Pharmaceuticals, and Brunangelo Falini, Director of the Hematology Institute at the University of Perugia, Italy.
On the science side, Rasna has a stable of experts on its board, who bring a great deal of blood cancer-related R&D experience to the table, including Riccardo Dalla-Favera, who heads up the Institute for Cancer Genetics at Columbia University and Pier Giuseppe Pelicci, the Chairman of the Department of Experimental Oncology at the European Institute of Oncology.
“Becoming a public company is a key element of our growth strategy, and the completion of this reverse merger is a significant accomplishment for Rasna Therapeutics. We believe that this breakthrough program may have significant benefits across all forms of leukemia. Our NPM1 program targets the sub-set of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients with the NPM1 mutation and may also benefit the general AML population," said James Tripp, Acting Chief Executive Officer of Rasna,