AdAlta’s (ASX:1AD) Chair has told shareholders the company has reached a pivotal point in its strategic transformation, describing 2025 as the year the business fully committed to its 'East to West' cellular immunotherapy model and positioned itself to unlock significant near-term value across its pipeline.
Addressing the 2025 Annual General Meeting, the Chair, Paul MacLeman, said AdAlta is now “a year into our transformation journey, foreshadowed at our 2024 AGM,” and that the company “now stand poised to capitalise on the work done during the past year to give effect to this transformation.”
Central to this shift is AdAlta’s plan to become a regional leader in next-generation T-cell therapies for solid cancers. MacLeman described the strategic move as being supported by “two seismic shifts in biotechnology”. There is mounting global evidence that T-cell therapies can deliver “transformational therapeutic outcomes impossible with other therapeutic modalities,” and the rise of China as a worldwide "powerhouse of biopharmaceutical innovation.”
In 2025, AdAlta completed due diligence and development planning for two highly differentiated CAR-T therapies sourced from China, with MacLeman confirming the company is “in the late stages of negotiating development and collaboration agreements for the first, and extending negotiations for the second to include options on additional assets.” Both programs already have clinical evidence in humans, “providing stronger evidence of safety and efficacy than could be achieved with animal studies alone.”
MacLeman said confidence in sourcing assets from China “continued to be validated” by rising global licensing activity and by supportive investor sentiment toward the business model. AdAlta is engaged in “multiple ongoing and highly productive discussions with potential investors” and expects to “secure the capital to support licensing our first CAR-T asset in the very near future.”
While the focus has shifted to the 'East to West' strategy, AdAlta reiterated the significant value held in its existing assets, particularly AD-214. This is its first-in-class anti-fibrotic fusion protein targeting lung and kidney diseases such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
AdAlta is advancing partnering discussions for AD-214 and separately exploring opportunities to out-license WD-34, described as “the world’s first antibody-like molecule conferring pan-species inhibition of malaria,” with additional activity against Babesia and Toxoplasma. WD-34 could enable “a new, single-dose prophylactic treatment” for travellers, deployed personnel, and populations in endemic regions.
MacLeman acknowledged the pressures of a difficult financing environment, noting it had remained “challenging during the year due to global financial market volatility,” which led to slower-than-hoped progress in partnering discussions. In response, the company “implemented significant and appropriate cost reduction measures.”
Despite the headwinds, MacLeman said conditions had begun to improve, highlighted by the company's ability to raise $1.6 million from inbound investor interest in October, in addition to $1.3 million from an earlier entitlement offer. The company has also “strengthened our balance sheet and capital table by retiring all remaining share issuance obligations” under legacy financing arrangements.
“We are on the cusp of an opportunity to create a regional leader in cellular immunotherapies at the forefront of two seismic shifts in our industry,” MacLeman said.