MediciNova provides update in letter to stockholders

MediciNova (MNOV) provides shareholders a corporate update in the following Letter to Stockholders from CEO Yuichi Iwaki, M.D., Ph.D.: “Since its founding, MediciNova has been clear in its mission to deliver new treatment options to the patients suffering with unmet medical needs… Our recently announced collaboration to supply our compound MN166 as part of an NIH-funded expanded access clinical trial is illustrative of this commitment, as it provides the Company with non-dilutive funding as we collaborate to continue to develop MN166 for ALS without incurring the expenses associated with an additional clinical trial. The six-month trial is being conducted with 17 institutions, all under the aegis of the lead institution and funded entirely by the NIH and without the added expenses of contract research organizations). Concurrently, we are conducting the COMBAT-ALS trial, our Company-sponsored Phase 2/3 trial of MN166 for ALS, which is a sponsored 12-month trial. We believe that the combination of the two trials allow us to more completely investigate MN166 in a significantly larger patient population, while maintaining a prudent hold on cash. Importantly, the NIH-funded trial is also very much in line with our corporate strategy, which is to choose a small number of trials on which to focus our resources and identify partners and other funding sources to ensure that additional programs are conducted, our pipeline is robust, and yet our cash reserves are minimally impacted. We have several additional programs that are being overseen by both U.S. government agencies and outside the U.S. that follow this model of partnering with prestigious institutions and government agencies to conduct and sponsor clinical trials. Our responsibilities are usually limited to providing study drug in most of these cases, along with administrative and trial design support… Our cash and cash equivalents position remains strong, with $42.3 million as of September 30, 2024… The global landscape is in a state of perpetual flux, encompassing the natural environment, economy, and technological advancements… We also understand that our story may be perceived as complex. I hope that laying out this approach has gone some distance to help clarify our story.”