Health Check: For Pro Medicus, lightning strikes twice on another ASX-listed imaging up and comer | Stockhead
Pro Medicus has unleashed another thunderbolt of lightning. But for Echo IQ investors, it's not very, very frightening. Pic: Getty Images• Pro Medicus strikes $10-20 million investment deal with heart imager. . .
Pro Medicus has unleashed another thunderbolt of lightning. But for Echo IQ investors, it's not very, very frightening. Pic: Getty Images• Pro Medicus strikes $10-20 million investment deal with heart imager Echo IQ, sending the latter’s shares up 50%• The provisional tie-up follows Pro Medicus’ highly lucrative compact with 4D Medical last year• Elsewhere, cancer drug developers are gettin’ busyPro Medicus (ASX:PME)has struck a deal withEcho IQ (ASX:EIQ), by which the radiology imaging giant invests up to $20 million in the heart imaging play and resell its Echosolv product range. Under the heads of agreement, Pro Medicus will invest $10 million in Echo IQ, by way of convertible notes. It also has the option of investing a further $10 million, if the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clears Echo IQ’s Echosolv HF (heart failure) tool. Investors expect this to happen real soon. Echo IQ uses AI to analyse cardiac ultrasound measurements, to improve structural heart disease diagnosis. The company already has an FDA-cleared software product in Echosolv AS (as in aortic stenosis). Echosolv HF tackles a much broader heart failure indication and evidently is what piqued Pro Medicus’s interest. Pro Medicus recently introduced its own cardiology product. Echo IQ CEO Dustin Haines dubs the partnership as a “significant strategic milestone” for the company. “Beyond the proposed investment, the arrangement has the potential to provide exceptional validation for Echo IQ and access to a leading healthcare technology platform with an extensive US-based customer network,” he said. Pro Medicus already sells it Visage tools to a rota of leading US health systems, academic medical centres and enterprise healthcare customers. Echoing the 4D Medical dealPardon the pun, but the deal echoes Pro Medicus’ July 2025 tie-up with lung imager4D Medical (ASX:4DX), which also involved a $10 million initial investment. Following that, 4D won FDA assent for its AI lung ventilation tool and then reimbursement. 4D shares bolted like the colt from Old Regret and Pro Medicus filled its saddlebags nicely. The only difference this time is that Echo IQ shares already have had a stellar run. This morning the shares surged up to 50%, taking their 12-month gains to 630%. The market now values Echo IQ at well over $1 billion. The convertible notes have a $1 face value, with a 12. 5% interest rate and must be redeemed 24 months after their issue date. Pro Medicus also pockets 0. 75 unlisted options for every note subscribed for, exercisable at $1. 35 a share any time over the next two years. Imagion raises $3. 75 millionSpeaking of imaging,Imagion Biosystems (ASX:IBX)has raised $3. 75 million in a two-tranche placement to local sophisticated types. The company will devote the proceeds to a phase Ib/II trial of its Magsense imaging tech, to detect HER2-positive breast cancer. The FDA recently granted Investigational New Drug (IND) status for the study, to be run across multiple US sites. “We are very pleased with the strong demand we saw from investors following our milestone [FDA trial clearance],” executive chairman Robert Proulx says. The first tranche raises $592,000. Subject to shareholder approval, the second leg will raise a further $3. 2 million. All the shares are issued at 1. 2 cents apiece, a 24% discount to the ten-day weighted average price. Elsewhere,Control Bionics (ASX:CBL)has raised $9. 5 million in a placement and aims for $500,000 more via a share purchase plan. Prescient movesOncology drug developerPrescient Therapeutics (ASX:PTX)is one to watch as it goes deep into a phase II trial of its world-first compound. That’s the view of Pitt Street Partners, which notes that Prescient currently has the only drug of its kind for relapsed refractory cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL). Prescient’s PTX-100 is a GGTase-1 inhibitor – and thanks for asking. As of April Prescient had established 12 of the 16 intended sites and enrolled 18 patients. That’s nearly half of the 40 patients planned for the dose optimisation phase. Following that, the study will enroll a further 75 patients. Of the seven patients in an earlier phase Ib study, three (43%) showed a response, with an 100% clinical benefit rate (CBR) and a 12. 4-month response duration. A CBR is the percentage of patients who achieving a complete, partial or stable response for a prolonged period (usually six months). The study also showed zero serious treatment-related adverse events. PTX-100 outperformed the only recently FDA-approved CTCL drug, Lymphir, “on every comparable measure”. “Even though results may be some months away, the company continues to progress closer as it enrolls patients and initiates sites, ” Pitt Street says in a company-sponsored note. PTX-100 targets 22% of all cancers, equating to a US$1. 2 billion a year market. Pitt Street values Prescient shares at between 18-25 cents, compared to 11-16c previously. Prescient shares today traded around 6c, valuing the company at $65 million. Bella bella, ArovellaStill on blood cancers,Arovella Therapeutics (ASX:ALA)has won local ethics approval for the company’s first-in-human clinical trial of its lead ‘off the shelf’ cell therapy candidate. Arovella’s platform is based on invariant natural killer T cells, which the company combines with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) cells. The result of this molecular engineering, ALA-101 chases the CD19 antigen found on the surface of numerous cancer types. The planned phase I, open-label study will evaluate the safety, tolerability, and preliminary anti-tumour activity in patients with certain blood cancers. “First-in-human cannot happen fast enough because there is a long list of patients with nowhere else to go,” chairman David Williams says. The Alfred in Melbourne will act as the lead clinical site, overseen by lead investigator and CAR-T guru Dr Sam Fiorenza. Arovella expects the trial to expand to up to seven Australian and NZ clinical sites, with first patient dosing in the September quarter. Earlier, the FDA granted ALA-101 IND status. Today’s news follows Arovella’s early May management “refresh” – a. k. a shareholder revolt -that saw the departure of three directors, including CEO Dr Michael Baker. They were replaced by the ubiquitous Williams, formerNeurizon Therapeutics (ASX:NUZ)CEO Michael Thurn and former Antisense (nowPercheron Therapeutics (ASX:PER)CEO and currentDimerix (ASX:DXB)chair Mark Diamond. Inoviq drives CAR program homeMore on the cancer-busting frontOver atInoviq (ASX:IIQ), the multi-pronged developer reports evidence that its CAR exosome platform shows “strong in vitro tumour killing activity in ovarian cancer cell lines”. Exosomes are nanoscale extracellular vesicles secreted by cells. They play key roles in intercellular communication, immune regulation and disease modulation. Beyond that, the science of this one beats us, frankly – at least before our third coffee for the morning. A preclinical modelling study, the exercise showed the agent eliminated up to 90% of ovarian cancer cells within 48 hours. Inoviq’s off-the-shelf platform targets multiple hard-to-treat tumors, including non-small cell lung cancer and triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). The company expects data for TNBC in the December quarter. Anticipation of today’s news may have contributed to Inoviq’s June 17 price jump from 29. 5 cents to as much as 36. 5 cents – 23% – which the bourse duly queried. For those with a truly voracious appetite for oncology news,Racura Oncology (ASX:RAC)has treated the first patient in its phase I lung cancer trial, dubbed Harness 1. The company reports no adverse effects. The trial road tests Racura’s agent RC220, in combo with the standard of care osimertinib. The enrolled patients have a mutated form of non-small cell lung cancer, which means they resist osimertinib. The company expects the trial to treat between 12 and 40 patients in the three-stage, dose-escalation stanza. At Stockhead we tell it as it is. While Imagion Biosystems is a Stockhead advertiser, the company did not sponsor this article.