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Shares of nanocap Bright Minds Biosciences, Inc. ($DRUG) surged 47% in pre-market trading on Friday, making it one of the top five trending tickers on Stocktwits.
The spike followed the company’s announcement of a non-brokered private placement of common shares priced at $21.70 per share, Thursday’s closing price, with aggregate gross proceeds expected to reach up to $35 million.
Bright Minds intends to allocate these funds toward research and development for its drug development programs, as well as general working capital.
Just two days prior, Bright Minds announced promising data from preclinical testing of BMB-201, a non-opioid alternative for neuropathic pain relief, conducted in partnership with the National Institutes of Health’s pain screening program.
In nerve ligation pain models, BMB-201 demonstrated efficacy comparable to morphine, exhibiting superior reductions in mechanical allodynia and pain-related behaviors.
The company stated that BMB-201 might provide better pain relief than traditional opioid treatments while mitigating the risks of dependency and adverse side effects.
With these encouraging preclinical results, Bright Minds plans to advance BMB-201 into clinical trials to further assess its safety and efficacy in human subjects.
Additionally, Firefly Neuroscience ($AIFF) had also announced a collaboration with Bright Minds to analyze data from its first-in-human Phase 1 study of its lead compound, BMB-101.
Earlier this week, DRUG became an unlikely top gainer across U.S. exchanges, soaring over 1,440% without any apparent catalyst. This prompted the company to issue a statement noting it was “unaware of any material changes in the company’s operations that would account for the recent increase in market activity.”
On Stocktwits, the retail following for DRUG has surged 125% over the past week, while message volume has skyrocketed by over 290 times in the past month.
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