Matt Birney

Phylogica continues to prove the effectiveness of its lead first generation cell penetrating peptides, or “CPP’s”, after winning its first ever competitive test with a competitor CPP in an animal model. Mice treated with the company’s CPP vaccine before being injected with a highly aggressive melanoma, had a longer survival time compared to those treated with the competing CPP.

PharmAust has executed an agreement with a major US contract research organisation to start Phase I clinical trials for its flagship anti-cancer drug Monepantel in dogs on 19 February 2019 using its final tablet format. This will provide information on the number of tablets, administration frequency, blood levels and verification of safety for the Phase II trials in pet owners’ dogs with naturally occurring cancers.

Great Southern Mining has identified an exciting large-scale porphyry system containing highly anomalous assays at its Leichardt Creek prospect, located near Townsville in northern Queensland. Rock chip samples up to 0.56% copper, 0.12g/t gold and 0.46% molybdenum were returned from a broad zone of gossanous, stock worked quartz veining and disseminated multi-mineralised outcrops also elevated in silver, zinc and lead, over an area of nearly 6 square kilometres.

Calidus Resources has boosted the global mineral resource estimate at its Warrawoona gold project in the Pilbara by 75% to 21.2 million tonnes grading 1.83g/t gold for 1.25 million ounces. The new mineral resources will underpin the company’s ongoing PFS for the project, which is well underway and set for completion in the September quarter of this year.

Venus Metals Corporation has uncovered two promising boxwork gossans at its DeGrussa North copper project, located just 3km north of Sandfire Resources’ high-grade DeGrussa copper mine in WA’s Meekatharra mining district. Assays results for the rock and soil samples collected from the gossans are expected to be received in about two weeks.

Bellevue Gold has upgraded the inferred resources at its namesake project northwest of Leinster, WA, by 47% to 4Mt @ 11.8g/t gold for 1.53 million ounces of contained gold, just months after hitting the million ounce mark. Drilling is continuing at the very high-grade Viago Lode and Western Corridor and the company expects to release another mineral resource upgrade in the second quarter of this year.

Hot Chili has executed a binding MoU for an option to acquire a 100% interest in Chilean mining group SCM Carola’s Vallenar landholdings, that are adjacent to the company’s Productora and El Fuego copper assets in Chile. The new “Cortadera” tenements hold a significant copper-gold porphyry discovery which contains extraordinarily wide, high grade, drill intersections of copper/gold mineralisation never publicly released before.

Sovereign Metals has raised $4.3m through a share placement priced at 6.5c per share to accelerate the definitive feasibility study for its Malingunde flake graphite project in Malawi and additional metallurgical and exploration activities for the recently identified rutile potential. The company will also raise up to an additional $1m through a share purchase plan for existing shareholders.

Pilbara conglomerate gold theorist, Novo Resources, has generated encouraging gold recoveries of up to nearly 90% from ore sorting trials at its Comet Well project located near Karratha in WA. The trials produced ore grades up to 792.4g/t in sorted gold concentrates and additional work will now be undertaken at smaller crush sizes and on oxidised ore samples to optimise gold recoveries even further.