Frost Closes SciVac DealFrost Closes SciVac Deal, A Potential Blockbuster Lineup in Hepatitis
OPKTowards the end of last year, we | 1 hour ago
/www.globes.co.il/en/article-phillip-frost-seeks-scigen-reverse-merger-1000985030" rel="noindex nofollow" target="_blank">got word that Dr Phillip Frost, chairman and CEO of Opko Health, Inc. (OPK), was looking to restructure then private company SciVac (now SciVac Therapeutics Inc. (SVACF)) into a public entity. Little more was heard of the matter until March 2015, when gold and precious metals exploration company Levon Resources Ltd announcedthat it had entered into an agreement pursuant to which Levon would acquire 100% of the issued and outstanding ordinary shares of SciVac. OPKO had a 45% stake in SciVac, and so the deal would see current SciVac owners take 68.4% of the outstanding shares of the new company after its close, and Opko take a little over 30%. At first glance the arrangement can seem a little bit convoluted, but a closer look reveals it is very similar in structure to a number of other public shell spins Frost has orchestrated in the past.
On July 10, SciVac announced the completion of the transaction, and its granting of approval by the Toronto Stock Exchange. Frost has a dedicated following of both individual and institutional investors that monitor his activity, so any stock in which he has a hand has the potential to revalue quickly on positive news. Further, he has an outstanding track record in the biotech space, and for both these reasons, his hands-on involvement with the SciVac deal warrants attention.
Currently, more than 170 countries /content.stockpr.com/scivac/db/Presentations/832/pdf/SciVacTherapeutics+Investor+Presentation+%2824+July+2015%29.pdf" rel="noindex nofollow" target="_blank">have infant vaccination programs, and over 1 billion vaccines have been administered since 1982. The current standard of care necessitates three intravenous administrations over a period of six months. However, despite this vaccination effort, an astounding 2 billion people alive today have been infected with the virus at some point in their lives, an estimated 400 million people are currently carriers, 4 million individuals a year suffer from acute hepatitis B and 1.2 million people die every year from infection.
300 million globally, do not respond to current available vaccines. In addition, the current vaccinations are ineffective in the more than 2 million children born to infected mothers each year. Finally, with the current standard of care taking six months, frequent travelers are unprovided for.
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The third-generation vaccine has demonstrated efficacy in more than 20 company sponsored or investigator initiated trials across 5000+ individuals. The treatment is also already approved in 10 countries, and has been administered to more than 500,000 patients in these regions. Further, in two independent comparative studies, Sci-B-Vac demonstrated it produced seroprotection (i.e. protection from the virus the vaccination is designed to treat) more rapidly in both adults newborns than in healthy individuals treated with Engerix B – the current SOC vaccination.
Hepatitis B is not the only liver disease Frost is involved in either. He is also involved in a hepatitis C vaccine company called Cocrystal Pharma, Inc. (/finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=COCP&t=2015-07-27T16:17:32-04:00" rel="noindex nofollow" target="_blank">COCP). Cocrystal is up 256% since August last year, down from gains of around 300% logged in April. Frost currently owns about 20% of Cocrystal individually through his investment trust, and his healthcare company Opko also has an 8% position – structuring its ownership in a very similar way to how Frost has set up in SciVac. Cocrystal itself went public through an acquisition structured in an almost identical fashion to SciVac, through an acquisition by BioZone Pharmaceuticals, Inc, then trading under the ticker "BZNE" and since renamed Cocrystal.
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