Health and biotech names delivered a mix of growth capital and regulatory milestones. EDX Medical Group secured fresh funding to scale its employee health screening business, while GSK notched two significant wins on the regulatory front, a priority review pathway for its cancer immunotherapy Jemperli and the world's first approval for its hepatitis B treatment Hibsago.
EDX Medical raises £2.7m to fund health screening expansion
EDX Medical Group (AIM:EDX) has raised approximately £2.7m through a subscription for 19.38m new shares priced at 14p each, sending the stock up 15.385% to 11.25p. The Cambridge-based diagnostics group, which develops digital testing products for early disease detection, is directing the proceeds toward expanding its employee health screening service, a combination of biomarker testing panels, general health checks and a bespoke follow-up diagnostic offering aimed at UK employers.
Each subscription share comes with warrants over two further shares, exercisable at 3p between 20 July 2028 and 19 July 2029, giving early backers additional upside tied to the company's progress. Discussions on definitive contracts with three significant UK employers, first disclosed on 15 July, are moving forward, with testing still slated to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026, and two more large companies have since approached EDX Medical approximately the service. Separately, the company confirmed that £860,000 of the £1.2m revenue it had expected to book for the year ended 31 March has been deferred into the current financial year, after discussions with auditors concluded that order processing extended beyond the year-end cutoff.
"Investors in the Company have again demonstrated their confidence in the Company's strategy," said Chris Evans, Founder of EDX Medical.
The deferred revenue is a timing quirk rather than a demand problem, initial fulfilment of the pending employer contracts could still generate more than £2m in the current financial year, with repeat revenues to follow. What matters more for the investment case is the pipeline building behind the three flagship employer deals: with two additional large companies now in talks, EDX Medical is starting to look less like a single-contract bet and more like a scalable corporate health screening platform, provided the Q4 2026 launch timeline holds.
FDA grants priority review to GSK's Jemperli for rectal cancer
GSK (LSE:GSK) has secured priority review from the US Food and Drug Administration for Jemperli (dostarlimab) in previously untreated stage II and III mismatch repair deficient and microsatellite instability-high locally advanced rectal cancer, with the shares slipping 1.016% to 1899.0p on the day. The FDA has set a PDUFA action date of February 2027, and the application also qualifies for the agency's National Priority Voucher program, which could accelerate the timeline further.
Rectal cancer affects roughly 770,000 people globally each year, with the dMMR/MSI-H subtype making up an estimated 5-10% of cases. Standard treatment, chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, can leave patients with lasting effects on bowel, urinary and sexual function, along with fertility. The submission is built on the phase II AZUR-1 trial, which hit its primary endpoint of a sustained clinical complete response at 12 months, meaning no detectable cancer signs for at least a year.
If approved, Jemperli would give a meaningful subset of rectal cancer patients the option to avoid invasive surgery and radiation altogether, reinforcing GSK's oncology franchise and adding a further indication to a drug already established in other tumour types. Priority review status compresses the regulatory timeline and signals the FDA sees clear unmet need in this population.
GSK wins first global approval for hepatitis B drug Hibsago
GSK (LSE:GSK) has secured approval from Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare for Hibsago (bepirovirsen), an antisense oligonucleotide positioned as a functional cure for chronic hepatitis B in adults who have completed at least six months of prior nucleos(t)ide analogue therapy and meet specified viral marker thresholds. The decision, GSK's shares trading at 1899.0p and down 1.016% on the day, marks the first global approval anywhere for bepirovirsen and the first functional cure treatment for the disease cleared in Japan, where nearly one million people live with chronic hepatitis B and the condition contributes to roughly 4,000 deaths annually.
The approval was accelerated through Japan's SENKU designation, reserved for innovative medicines addressing high unmet medical need. "After six months of treatment with Hibsago, patients could be freed from life-long therapy and reduce their risk of long-term liver complications," said Tony Wood, GSK's chief scientific officer, describing the clearance as a major advance for the company's hepatology portfolio.
As the first-ever approval for bepirovirsen, the Japan clearance establishes a regulatory precedent GSK will look to replicate in other major markets, potentially opening a new revenue line in a disease area where treatment has historically meant indefinite daily therapy rather than a defined course ending in functional cure.
