Neuralstem announces completion of $10 million registered direct offering

Neuralstem, Inc. (NYSE Amex: CUR) announced that it has completed its previously announced registered direct offering of $10 million of units to institutional investors. The units were priced at $2.80 and consisted of: (i) one share of common stock, and (ii) 3/4 common stock purchase warrant.  The warrants have an exercise price of $3.25 and a term of three years. Net proceeds from this offering, after deducting placement agent fees and other offering expenses, total approximately $9.2 million. All of the securities were offered pursuant to an effective shelf registration statement.

Neuralstem intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for working capital and general corporate purposes.

"This offering will provide funding of pre-clinical work and planned clinical programs for both our rapidly advancing biotherapeutics and pharmaceutical initiatives, which   makes this is an important and timely raise for us," said Neuralstem President & CEO, Richard Garr. "These funds, combined with our expected second quarter ending cash position of approximately $5 million, meet our budget and support our aggressive clinical plans into 2012."

Dr. Karl Johe, Neuralstem's Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer provided an update on Neuralstem's programs, "Our ongoing spinal cord stem cell trial for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is approaching the completion of treatment of the late-stage ALS cohort, with our sixth patient planned for a mid-July transplant. The trial is expected to commence into treating the mid-stage ALS cohort, pending SMB approval.  With this financing, our scientific and clinical research teams are now assured that we can move forward with our plans for additional FDA clinical trial submissions. We anticipate that the first of these will be an Investigational New Drug (IND) submission for a multi-site Phase I clinical trial for chronic spinal cord injury. Internationally, our cell therapy work is focused on starting operations in China; supporting our Korean partner, Cheil Jedang Corporation,  as it moves to launch its first Asian markets clinical trial; and continued work on the Huntington's disease project with our collaborators at Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany.

On the pharmaceutical front, our scientists will be completing the pre-clinical work to submit INDs to the FDA for Phase I clinical trials for our first-in-class neurogenic small molecule drug."

Dr. Johe also noted, "We are continuing to pursue other indications in cell therapy. These include Alzheimer's disease and glioblastoma. We are also working on pre-clinical pharmaceutical programs with our small-molecule drug compounds for Alzheimer's disease and major depression.  By this time next year, we believe that our transition from the laboratory to the clinic should be well advanced, with multiple cell therapy trials and a pharmaceutical/small molecule drug clinical trial underway."

Mr. Garr concluded, "It is very encouraging for our management team and our clinical research partners to see the capital markets reward their continued achievement of milestones and scientific advancement with solid financial support."

Noble Financial Capital Markets acted as the sole placement agent for the offering and National Securities participated as a financial advisor in the offering.

SOURCE Neuralstem, Inc.