looking back
Were we thrown under the bus a long time ago?? Signal Genetics, the parent company of Myeloma Health LLC and Respira Health LLC, a privately held predictive genetic testing company focused on oncology, announced that Respira Health has tendered a superior offer to license the LungExpress DX technology from Med BioGene of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. “With this new, superior offer, and the announcement of our commercial partnership, we hope to succeed in licensing and quickly making LungExpress DX technology available to physicians and their lung cancer patients. We encourage the Board of Directors and shareholders of MedBioGene to accept this overwhelmingly superior offer” The new terms include $2.3M in upfront payments and an additional $1.2M in subsequent milestone payments. Respira would also cover transaction expenses and the payment of any break-up fees totaling up to an additional $350,000. The offer is superior to the current offer tendered by Precision Therapeutics (PTI) by almost $1.3M, and the payment terms offered by Respira Health are superior to Precision Therapeutics’ offer by 90 days. In addition, Respira has offered to increase the royalty rates by 0.5% over PTI’s current offer. Respira Health believes that it can achieve commercialization of a CLIA validated LungExpress DX assay, within 90 days of the agreement, in Signal Genetics’ CLIA laboratory in Little Rock, Arkansas. The company currently performs the MyPRS gene expression profile test for Multiple Myeloma on the Affymetrix GeneChip platform in this facility. Respira currently sells testing services using the CLIA validated Affymetrix GeneChip platform, a format required to launch LungExpress DX, and has the ability to offer the gene expression test in its CLIA laboratory. In addition, Signal has executed a Letter of Intent to market LungExpress DX with a large, national specialty laboratory that has over 1000 employees and more than 100 Sales representatives who sell directly to oncologists. “With this new, superior offer, and the announcement of our commercial partnership, we hope to succeed in licensing and quickly making LungExpress DX technology available to physicians and their lung cancer patients. We encourage the Board of Directors and shareholders of MedBioGene to accept this overwhelmingly superior offer,” said Joe Hernandez, President and CEO of Signal Genetics.