California-based Renovaro, a pharmaceutical company accelerating precision and personalized medicine for longevity, recently entered into an agreement to purchase Pittsburgh-based Predictive Oncology, a company using artificial intelligence and machine learning to expedite early biomarker and drug discovery and enable drug development.
Under the agreement, Predictive Oncology will be merged into Renovaro no later than Feb. 28. Predictive Oncology shareholders will receive a 1:1 exchange of Predictive Oncology common stock for a newly created series of preferred Renovaro stock. In addition, Renovaro must fundraise a minimum of $15 million.
“Since we initiated our formal review of strategic alternatives in mid-November, we have received significant inbound interest that has led to ongoing discussions and due diligence with several parties,” Raymond Vennare, Predictive Oncology chairman and CEO, said. “Through our discussions with Renovaro, we became increasingly compelled by the strategic potential of combining the Predictive’s AI-driven drug discovery platform and vast biobank of more than 150,000 patient tumor samples, 200,000 pathology slides and decades of longitudinal drug response data with Renovaro’s multi-disciplinary artificial intelligence, multi-omic and multi-modal data expertise.”
Predictive Oncology’s board of directors must approve the transaction. If the company fails to obtain shareholder approval, Renovaro will be entitled to a two-year exclusive royalty-free license to Predictive Oncology’s biobank.