ThermoGenesis Holdings Inc. has raised $3 million in a private placement, after seeing its loss grow in the third quarter.
The Rancho Cordova biotechnology company announced closing on the private placement of its stock on Monday. According to the announcement, it plans to use the proceeds as working capital and for general corporate purposes. Company representatives did not respond to a request for specifics.
ThermoGenesis (Nasdaq: THMO) develops cell and gene therapies and products that isolate cells and different components of blood.
Last March, it announced it was developing a new cell therapy manufacturing division, called TG Biosynthesis, as part of a licensing agreement with its affiliate company, China-based Boyalife Genomics Tianjin Ltd., and plans to build out a multimillion-dollar Center for Excellence in Cellular Manufacturing, which will provide contract manufacturing services for cell therapies, in Rancho Cordova.
According to a November financial disclosure, ThermoGenesis' third-quarter loss grew to $3.4 million from $1.79 million a year earlier, as sales declined by 33% to $2.115 million.
The company ended the quarter with $3.9 million in cash and cash equivalents, down from $7.28 million at the end of 2021.
"The company has incurred historical losses from operations and expects to continue to incur operating losses in the near future," the disclosure said.
In October, the company closed a $2.05 million public stock offering.
In the news release accompanying the disclosure, CEO Chris Xu said that work on the Rancho Cordova expansion was ongoing.
“During the third quarter, we continued to make significant progress towards launching our TG Biosynthesis division, with the goal of creating a 35,745-square-foot, state-of-the-art, cGMP compliant CDMO facility to support the industry’s growing manufacturing requirements,” Xu said in the release.
Pharmaceutical companies often contract with third-party development and manufacturing facilities, like the one ThermoGenesis is developing, to make cell therapy drugs.
Cell gene therapy, which primarily uses a patient’s cells to create drugs, is a fast-growing field in health care. The field includes CAR-T cell therapies, a promising cancer treatment that is made from the patient’s own blood cells that are reengineered in a lab to better target cancer cells.
“As more regenerative medicine treatments, such as CAR-T cell therapies, receive regulatory approval, the demand for manufacturing of these complex, lifesaving therapies continues to grow,” Xu said in the release.
