Respiratory drug company Synairgen (SNG:AIM) trades 5.1% lower at 32p after making a £1 million pre-tax loss in the six months to 30 June. This reverses the £1.8 million pre-tax profit it made a year earlier.
The £29.2 million cap uses research developed at the University of Southampton to make treatments to help those with breathing difficulties. It has SNG001 in two different clinical trials that it hopes will strengthen the immune systems in asthma or smoking-related COPD sufferers when they catch a cold, which makes these conditions worse.
The interim profit fall was the result of revenues slumping to £25,000 from £4.2 million. Synairgen is a development phase company, meaning that it does not have a product to sell. Its money predominately comes from selling equity and milestone payments from its development partners.
A $7.2 million payment from AstraZeneca (AZN) in June 2014 for licensing its clinical trial treatment boosted the interim figures last year. Further payments are due the closer the drug gets to reaching the market.
Synairgen continues to assess new treatments from its BioBank platform, which builds human tissue models to aid research into respiratory diseases.
