Kintara Therapeutics, Inc. ( KTRA ) shares are trading higher in the premarket session on Wednesday with heavy volume.

The company entered into a definitive merger agreement with TuHURA Biosciences.

The combined company will focus on advancing TuHURA’s personalized cancer vaccines and bi-functional ADCS. These two technologies seek to overcome the major obstacles that limit the effectiveness of current immunotherapies in treating cancer.

The combined company is expected to operate under the name TuHURA Biosciences, Inc. and trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker “HURA.”

TuHURA plans to advance a single Phase 3 trial for IFx-2.0 personalized cancer vaccine as adjunctive therapy with Keytruda in first-line therapy for advanced Merkel cell carcinoma in the second half of 2024 under the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway.

“Coupled with a $31 million subscribed financing by TuHURA in connection with the merger agreement, and which is expected to fund the combined company’s operations and development programs through late 2025, we believe this merger will also allow our combined company the flexibility to focus our resources and efforts on advancing IFx-2.0 to market and our other drug candidates toward human clinical trials,” said Dr. James Bianco, President and Chief Executive Officer of TuHURA. 

Subject to shareholder approval, post-merger, Kintara equityholders are set to collectively own around 2.85% of the combined company’s common stock, or approximately 5.45% including CVR shares.

TuHURA equityholders are expected to hold approximately 97.15% of the common stock, or 94.55% with CVR shares distributed.

Price Action: KTRA shares are trading higher by 129% to $0.23 premarket on the last check Wednesday.

Illustration of Phrama lab worker created with MidJourney.