Scancell Holdings plc, (PLUS:SCLP), the developer of therapeutic cancer vaccines, announces, further to the preliminary results announcement and the announcement of the Company’s proposed admission to AIM which were issued earlier today, the grant of share options to the Executive Directors of the Company under the EMI share option scheme.
In order to properly incentivise the Executive Directors, the Company has adopted an EMI Option Scheme. Under the terms of the EMI Option Scheme, each of Professor Lindy Durrant and Dr Richard Goodfellow have been granted options over Ordinary Shares of 1p each in the share capital of the Company.
The exercise price of the options is 45p; the same price at which new Ordinary Shares were issued under the Open Offer that was completed in March 2010. The Company has not been able to grant the options since the close of the Open Offer due to it being in a close period since that date. The exercise price represents a discount of approximately 28 per cent. to the middle market price of the Company’s Ordinary Shares at the close of business on 13 July 2010 which was 62.5p. Details of the EMI Options granted are set out in the table below:
| Executive Director |
Number of EMI Options |
Exercise Price |
Expiry Date |
Vesting criteria |
| Professor Lindy Durrant |
385,000 |
45p |
31.12.15 |
Conditional on the Company being sold for > £25 million |
| Dr Richard Goodfellow |
288,000 |
45p |
31.12.15 |
Conditional on the Company being sold for > £25 million |
The Directors of the issuer accept responsibility for this announcement.
For further information contact:
Professor Lindy Durrant, (CEO) - Scancell Holdings Plc:
John Bick/Kirsty Corcoran - Hansard Communications
Ross Andrews/Tom Rowley - Zeus Capital
About Scancell
Scancell is developing novel therapeutic vaccines for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases based on its groundbreaking ImmunoBody® technology platform. Scancell’s first cancer vaccine SCIB1 is being developed for the treatment of melanoma and has recently entered clinical trials.
Treating cancer by vaccination allows small non-toxic doses of a vaccine to be administered to a patient, stimulating an immune response. Effective cancer vaccines need to target dendritic cells to stimulate both parts of the cellular immune system; the helper cell system where inflammation is stimulated at the tumour site; and the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte or CTL response where immune system cells are primed to recognise and kill specific cells.
A limitation of many cancer vaccines currently in development is that they cannot specifically target dendritic cells in vivo. Several groups have demonstrated successful vaccination by growing dendritic cells ex vivo, pulsing them with tumour antigens and re-infusing them. However, this procedure is patient specific, time consuming and expensive. Scancell has developed its breakthrough patent protected ImmunoBody® technology to overcome these limitations.
An ImmunoBody® is a human antibody or fusion protein engineered to express helper cell and CTL epitopes from tumour antigens over-expressed by cancer cells. Antibodies are ideal vectors for carrying T cell epitopes from tumour antigens as they have long half-lives and can effectively target dendritic cells via their Fc receptors, allowing efficient stimulation of both helper and CTL responses.
The Immunobody® technology can be adapted to provide the basis for treating any tumour type and may also be of potential utility in the development of vaccines against hepatitis, HIV and other chronic infectious diseases.