BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics Inc., a development stage company that focuses on stem cell therapeutic products, recently announced that it has signed a $250,000 common stock purchase contract with a single institutional investor.
The agreement entitles that BrainStorm will sell 833,333 of common stocks at $0.30 per share, a 20% premium to the prior trading day’s closing price for the common stock. The gross proceeds will be $250,000 together with a 12-month warrant purchase of 641,026 shares of BrainStorm’s common stock at $0.39 per stock, which is a 56% premium to the prior day’s closing price for BrainStorm’s stock.
“2011 is off to an exciting start for BrainStorm and its shareholders,” said Chaim Lebovits, President of BrainStorm. “With the proceeds from this financing, recent funding from Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist, and new additions to our management team and Board of Directors, we are well-positioned to enter clinical trials with our autologous NurOwn™ stem cell therapy, which could represent a new treatment paradigm for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurological disorders. We look forward to building on our recent achievements and expect 2011 to be a transformational year for BrainStorm.”
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, is a progressed neurodegenerative disease that has a prominent affect on the nerve cells located in the spinal cord and the brain and causes involuntary movement in the muscles. In about 10% of all cases, ALS is caused by a genetic defect, while the remaining cases have an unknown cause. In accordance to the ALS Association, about 5,600 people in the US have been diagnosed with ALS every year, with as many as 30,000 Americans that have the disease at any given time. ALS affects approximately 5 out of every 100,000 people in the world. The financial cost for the family is immensely high, with an average cost of $200,000 per year for those in the advanced stage. This represents over $6 billion in costs for the healthcare system.
BrainStorm Cell’s main technology, NurOwn™, premiers its basis from the scientific accomplishments of Professor Eldad Melamed, the former Head of Neurology, Rabin Medical Center, and Tal-Aviv University, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, and Professor Daniel Offen, Head of the Neuroscience Laboratory, Felsenstein Medical Research Center (FMRC) located at the Tel-Aviv University.
The NurOwn™ technology is used to process adult human mesenchymal stem cells that are in the bone marrow and have the capability to self-renew as well as differentiate into various other cell types. The research team has been the first to have a successful trial of the in-vitro differentiation of adult bone marrow cells into to astrocyte-like cellsthat are capapble of releasing neurotrophic factors like glial-derived neurotrophic factors. The ability to induce differentiation into astrocyte-like cells along with intramuscular delivery makes NurOwn™ a very effective treatment for ALS, Parkinson’s disease, MS, and spinal cord injury.
BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics focuses its products on breakthrough technology in in-vitro differentiation of bone marrow cells to neutral like cells. The intention is to utilize the patient’s bone marrow stem cells to help generate neuron-like that may lead to an effective treatment for ALS. BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, which was formerly known as Golden Hand Resources Inc, changed its name in November of 2004. The company was founded in 200 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
For more information, you can visit the company’s website at www.brainstorm-cell.com
Let us hear your thoughts below:
