CancerVax

CancerVax was founded in Delaware by Dr. Donald Morton in 1998. Prior to the formation of the company, Dr. Morton researched at the John Wayne Cancer Institute. After discovering what would eventually become CancerVax's lead product candidate, Canvaxin, Donald left John Wayne Cancer Institute to start the company and push the drug through the clinical trials necessary in order to take a drug to the market. The company used specific mergers and joint ventures to attempt to humanize their antibodies and push their drugs through their pipeline.

While the company eventually had several drugs in their pipeline focused on melanoma, colon cancer, lung cancer, solid tumors, and ophthalmic disease, their lead candidate Canvaxin was focused on melanoma. Canvaxin was a vaccine based treatment for melanoma, and was an immunotherapeutic. In the clinical trials it has been proven an effective treatment, with a significantly greater (P<0.0001) median survival rate over than no treatment.

Immunotherapy in its most general form for cancer treatment uses the immune system to target tumor cells. While all cells produce cytokines and have receptor proteins on the cell surface, tumor cells may over-express them. Targeted immunotherapy towards these over expressed proteins could be an effective treatment towards different cancers. There are three types of immunotherapy, and they are briefly described below

Passive Immunotherapy: Direct administration of monoclonal antibodies targeted to a specific cell receptor or protein to inhibit a tumor function or target the tumor itself.

Non-Specific Active Immunotherapy: A general immune system response using cytokines and other cell signaling. Since this treatment is very general it has many complicated side effects.

Three months after the poor Phase III data forced it to suspend work on Canvaxin, CancerVax agreed to team up with Micromet, a private German company, in a buyout valued at $126.7 million. Cancervax used an initial public offering (IPO) in August 2003, listing on NASDAQ at $13.00 a share. In fiscal years 2004 and 2005, Cancervax recorded net losses of $56 million and 40 million, respectively. By December, 2006, the stock price had fallen to $3.46. In May 2006, when Micromet was formally taken over by CancerVax in a reverse merger, a new NASDAQ-listed company was formed and renamed "Micromet Inc." The merger was "reversed" in that although CancerVax technically acquired Micromet, shareholders of Micromet received 67.5% of the shares of the new combined company, giving them control of the newly formed Micromet Inc. The deal allowed Micromet access to leverage CancerVax's existing U.S. public company infrastructure, and added a preclinical candidate for solid tumors to their product portfolio.

CancerVax and Micromet likely chose to enter into this reverse merger because CancerVax needed a way to rebound after the failure of Canvaxin, and Micromet needed an easy way to go public. Because of high underwriting fees and the fixed costs of going public through investment banks, it is difficult for small firms to go public via an IPO because of insufficient liquidity gains. Small, private firms, like Micromet, are less likely to find hiring an underwriter to be a positive net present value project and hence gain more benefits from going public by a reverse merger rather than an IPO.v Micromet Inc. started trading on NASDAQ on May 9, 2006, opening at $9.33 and closed at 6.54 with a volume of 40,925 shares traded. Micromet announced in 2008 that it was seeking to raise $40 million through issuing additional stock

In March 2021,CancerVAX raised a $2 million round from undisclosed investors in March 2021. They also launched a StartEngine campaign to raise funds.