Matt Birney

PharmAust has kicked-off its much-anticipated Phase II clinical trials that will study the effectiveness of the new palatable and high dose tablet formulation of its Monepantel anti-cancer drug in dogs. The trial will determine the efficacy of the drug over a prolonged period of time in dogs with B cell lymphoma before testing progresses to low dose maintenance of progression free survival and efficacy in other cancers.

Strike Energy’s West Erregulla-2 exploration well in the Perth Basin, Western Australia has intersected 10 metres of net gas pay with average porosity of 10.3% in the High Cliff sandstone target. The company is currently undertaking additional advanced wireline logging at the well before running and cementing production casing ahead of carrying out flow tests for the Kingia and High Cliff zones.

Surface trench sampling has commenced at Terrain Minerals’ Wild Viper gold project near Leonora, WA, where rock chip sampling unearthed up to 4.67g/t gold in stockwork quartz veining in March. The company will complete four long trenches for 640m across the 382-shear prospect, which will assist in siting future drilling locations, over a prospective 2.5km long structure that has not been targeted by exploration in the past.

Geopacific Resources has appointed Perth-based GR Engineering as the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the processing plant at its Woodlark gold project in Papua New Guinea. The agreement covers the planned 2.4 million tonne per annum carbon in leach facility, tailings line and other supporting infrastructure with the potential for early works to procure tenders and pre-order long-lead items.

Independent testing has indicated that graphite concentrate from BlackEarth Minerals’ Maniry project in southern Madagascar, meets the purity specification required by lithium-ion battery anode material manufacturers. The company is continuing discussions for potential offtake agreements and has entered into several confidentiality agreements with interested parties.

MGC Pharmaceuticals has received Human Research Ethics Committee approval to carry out a clinical study comparing the effectiveness of its medical cannabis products for the treatment of severe epilepsy. This will compare its pharmaceutical-grade low tetrahydrocannabinol medicine authorised for prescription as an Investigational Medicinal Product in Australia and the UK, against its 100% cannabidiol product.

Image Resources has mapped out ultra-high-grade heavy mineral sands mineralisation for a further 2km northwards at its Boonanarring mineral sands project near Perth. The company has now completed infill drilling across all proposed mining blocks at the operation, with assay results expected shortly, which should allow a full update of mineral resources and ore reserves for the project in the December quarter of this year.

St George Mining has delineated a new occurrence of high-grade nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation in drilling at its Radar prospect near Leonora, WA, which extends the strike of the emerging Cathedrals Belt base metal deposits to 5.5km. The program was targeting chargeable EM anomalies identified from geophysics below the sand cover and defined a wide zone of disseminated and massive sulphides at a depth of 44.2m down-hole.

Surefire Resources is poised to commence a 30-hole reverse circulation drilling campaign totalling 3,000 metres at its Victory Bore project near Sandstone, WA, next month, to test seven target areas highlighted by anomalous gold with coincident geophysical anomalism. Previous drilling in the 1990s defined a gold-in-soil anomaly about 4.4 kilometres long and up to 750 metres wide.