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2. OPERATIONS AND FINANCING
12 Months Ended
Sep. 30, 2019
Operations And Financing  
2. OPERATIONS AND FINANCING

The Company has incurred significant costs since its inception in connection with the acquisition of certain patented and unpatented proprietary technology and know-how relating to the human immunological defense system, patent applications, research and development, administrative costs, construction of laboratory facilities, and clinical trials.  The Company has funded such costs with proceeds from loans and the public and private sale of its securities.  The Company will be required to raise additional capital or find additional long-term financing in order to continue with its research efforts.  To date, the Company has not generated any revenue from product sales.  As a result, the Company has been dependent upon the proceeds from the sale of its securities to meet all of its liquidity and capital requirements and anticipates having to do so in the future. During fiscal year 2019 and 2018, the Company received net proceeds of approximately $14.8 million and $21.4 million, respectively, through the sale of stock and the exercise of warrants and options. The ability of the Company to complete the necessary clinical trials and obtain FDA approval for the sale of products to be developed on a commercial basis is uncertain. Ultimately, the Company must complete the development of its products, obtain the appropriate regulatory approvals and obtain sufficient revenues to support its cost structure.

 

The Company is currently in the final stages of its large multi-national Phase 3 clinical trial for head and neck cancer with its partners TEVA Pharmaceuticals and Orient Europharma. To finance the study beyond the next twelve months, the Company plans to raise additional capital in the form of warrant exercises, corporate partnerships, debt and/or equity financings. The Company believes that it will be able to obtain additional financing because it has done so consistently in the past and because Multikine is a product in the Phase 3 clinical trial stage. However, there can be no assurance that the Company will be successful in raising additional funds on a timely basis or that the funds will be available to the Company on acceptable terms or at all.  If the Company does not raise the necessary amounts of money, it may have to curtail its operations until such time as it is able to raise the required funding.

 

The financial statements have been prepared assuming that the Company will continue as a going concern, but due to the Company’s recurring losses from operations and future liquidity needs, there is substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. The financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of this uncertainty.

 

Since the Company launched its Phase 3 clinical trial for Multikine, the Company has incurred expenses of approximately $55.8 million as of September 30, 2019 on direct costs for the Phase 3 clinical trial. The Company estimates it will incur additional expenses of approximately $4.5 million for the remainder of the Phase 3 clinical trial.  It should be noted that this estimate is based only on the information currently available from the Clinical Research Organizations responsible for managing the Phase 3 clinical trial and does not include other related costs, e.g., the manufacturing of the drug.  This number may be affected by the rate of death accumulation in the study, foreign currency exchange rates and many other factors, some of which cannot be foreseen today. It is therefore possible that the cost of the Phase 3 clinical trial will be higher than currently estimated.

 

Nine hundred twenty-eight (928) head and neck cancer patients have been enrolled and have completed treatment in the Phase 3 study. The study’s primary end point is a 10% increase in overall survival of patients between the two main comparator groups in favor of the group receiving the Multikine treatment regimen. The determination if the study end point is met will occur when there are a total of 298 deaths in those two groups.

 

On October 31, 2013, the Company commenced arbitration proceedings against inVentiv Health Clinical, LLC, or inVentiv, its former clinical research organization (CRO), and now part of Syneos Health. The arbitration claim, initiated under the Commercial Rules of the American Arbitration Association, alleged (i) breach of contract, (ii) fraud in the inducement, and (iii) common law fraud. On June 25, 2018, the arbitrator ruled that inVentiv materially breached its contract with the Company and denied inVentiv all but one of its counterclaims ($429,649 for certain unpaid invoices) against the Company. The arbitrator awarded the Company $2,917,834 in damages. This is a final and binding decision and to the Company’s knowledge, marks the first ever decision in favor of a pharmaceutical/biomedical company against a CRO for breach of contract. However, pursuant to the terms of an agreement with an affiliate of Lake Whillans Litigation Finance, LLC, a firm that produced partial funding for the legal expenses incurred by the Company in the arbitration proceedings, all amounts received from inVentiv by virtue of the arbitration award were paid to Lake Whillans Litigation Finance. As a result of the arbitrator’s ruling, during the year ended September 30, 2018, the Company wrote off approximately $471,000, which will no longer be realized.