ILA adds $1M cash to its balance sheet
Our 2025 biotech Pick Of The Year Island Pharmaceuticals (ASX: ILA) just added another $1M cash to its balance sheet.
ILA had ~$1M in options exercised at 7c (source) - which should add to the ~$6.9M in cash the company had in the bank at 30 September 2025. (source)
Interestingly, the options were exercised mostly by management, including chairman Jason Carroll, Non-executive director Chris Ntoumenopoulos, plus substantial holders including Dr Daniel Tillett and MWP Partners Limited.
So a lot of the new paper is going to “sticky” hands.
More importantly, ILA now has a fairly strong balance sheet to move its Marburg drug toward animal trials…
ILA is looking to develop Galidesivir as an antiviral drug aimed at treating Marburg disease.
Marburg virus is classified as a Category A bioterrorism threat (the highest level threat) by the US government (source).
ILA recently got approved for a fast tracking avenue utilising the “Animal Rule” and a valuable Priority Review Voucher.
This allows ILA to effectively skip a 15+ year, expensive process of human phase 2 & 3 clinical trials.
Marburg is the only Category A biothreat with no current vaccine or FDA approved treatment…
It's also one of the most deadly with a fatality rate up to 88%.
It’s classified as a biothreat because it can be weaponised (and it was part of the soviet bioweapons program in the 80’s,(source, source).
ILA is going for approvals on the drug via a fast tracked “Animal Rule” approvals pathway - which is basically where biotech’s can seek FDA approvals for really deadly diseases on animal trials alone.
(Cutting out the 10-15 years of human trials needed for most drugs).
We are Invested in ILA to see it go through the animal rule process - get its drug FDA approved (fingers crossed).
Approvals for ILA (potentially inside the next 12-18 months) could unlock:
- A Priority Review Voucher (PRV) that comes in if ILA’s Galidesivir is FDA approved - these can be worth on average ~US$150M.
- US Government national stockpiling deals - these can be worth anything between US$100M to US$1.2BN ANNUALLY
We covered all of this in our most recent note here: ILA: Our Biotech Pick of the Year
On the government contracts front - ILA recently appointed Todd Strategy Group (TSG) to improve its US government engagement which we covered here.
AND recently joined the Medical Countermeasures Coalition (MC2).
That association is made up of other companies who have received government contracts before including:
- SIGA Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: SIGA), capped at $640M
- Bavarian Nordic A/S (BAVA.CO), capped at $3.6BN
- Ginkgo BioWorks Holdings Inc. (NYSE: DNA), capped at $790M
- CSL Seqirus (part of ASX: CSL), CSL capped at $88BN
- Genentech (part of Roche Group, SWX: ROG), Roche Group capped at $536BN
As a part of this, ILA has now joined a group of companies who have already commercialised drugs and received US stockpiling contracts, you can read more on our coverage here.
What’s next for ILA in the next ~6 months
Mid November: ILA confirmed Animal Rule eligibility for its Marburg drug ✅
NEXT: FDA confirms to ILA the use of the Animal Rule for its Marbourg disease treatment and PRV voucher eligibility successful.
NEXT: Commence animal trial for deadly Marburg disease. Here are the milestones we will be tracking for the animal study:
- 🔲 Clinical trial design completed
- 🔲 Clinical trial starts
- 🔲 Clinical trial completed
- 🔲 Clinical trial results
NEXT: (Assuming results are good) Submit to FDA for commercial approval and access to Priority Review Voucher
