Spotlight Innovation

History

Spotlight Innovation Inc. was founded in 2012 as Spotlight Innovation, LLC. It became its current iteration in December 2013 after a merger with American Exploration Corp. (AEXP), which had been founded in 2006. At the time of the merger, the new entity, Spotlight Innovation Inc., named Cristopher Grunewald the Chief Executive Officer. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority approved the name change and the merger on December 16, 2013. Spotlight Innovation began trading on the OTCQB marketplace as STLT in January 2014.

In 2014, Spotlight Innovation founded Celtic Biotech Iowa, Inc., as a subsidiary and entered into a share exchange agreement with Celtic Biotech LTD, an Ireland-based pharmaceutical company developing products for the treatment of cancer and pain. According to the terms of the agreement, Celtic Biotech LTD became a subsidiary of Celtic Biotech Iowa, Inc. and was also granted access to Spotlight Innovation's commercialization and business development services. In April 2015, Celtic Biotech Iowa's first product, a formulation developed to facilitate topical delivery of drugs called EPISORB, was registered with the Food and Drug Administration and incorporated into the Pharmacy Benefit Managers database.

In March 2015, Spotlight entered into a purchase agreement with Memcine Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a Coralville, Iowa-based biotech company specializing in vaccine efficacy. Memcine Pharmaceuticals would officially become a Spotlight Innovation subsidiary in June 2015. In April 2015, Spotlight Innovation secured $2.5 million in financing from an unsecured convertible promissory note.

Subsidiaries

Spotlight Innovation seeks out partnerships and acquisition possibilities with companies developing medical technologies in fields like pharmaceuticals, devices and equipment, and diagnostic products. Currently, Spotlight Innovation has two subsidiary companies: Celtic Biotech Iowa, Inc. and Memcine Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Celtic Biotech Iowa, Inc.

Celtic Biotech Iowa's subsidiary, Celtic Biotech LTD, was founed in Dublin, Ireland in 2003 by brothers John Reid and Dr. Paul Reid (the latter of whom serves as the president of Celtic Biotech). Celtic Biotech made headlines in 2011 when they announced a clinical trial to test the effectiveness of Crotoxin, a protein found in South American rattlesnake venom, that could cause cell death in malignant cancer cells. Crotoxin was tested on patients in the George Pompidou University Hospital in Paris.

In 2014, Celtic Biotech LTD entered into a share exchange agreement with Spotlight Innovation's wholly owned subsidiary, Celtic Biotech Iowa, Inc. Celtic Biotech LTD also became a subsidiary of Celtic Biotech Iowa. Since then, Celtic Biotech Iowa has produced the commercial product, EPISORB, a topical gel formulated to deliver drugs transdermally. The company also licensed a cardiotoxin therapy for acute and chronic nephropathy in 2015. In January, 2015, Celtic Biotech Iowa was granted a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office entitled Crotoxin Administration for Cancer Treatment and Pain Relief. In July 2015, the company entered into a research agreement with Atlanta-based Emory University to study the viability of the cell-penetrating peptide Crotamine—a protein found in the venom of the South American rattlesnake, crotalus durissus terrificus—as a radiopharmaceutical for imaging lung cancer tumors with Positron Emission Tomography (PET).

Memcine Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Memcine Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was founded in 2010 and leases wet laboratory facilities at the BioVentures Center at the University of Iowa Research Park in Coralville, Iowa. Memcine Pharmaceuticals invented the Immunoplex™ vaccine platform technology which enables a universal approach to the development of immune complex vaccine production and uses the body's own naturally occurring targeting system to deliver vaccine components to immune cells. The company's primary focus is on enhancing vaccine efficacy for infectious disease targets like influenza, hepatitis B and Ebola, and in developing immunotherapy for certain kinds of cancer.