DelMar Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DMPI) Has A Massive Next Twelve Months

DelMar Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DMPI) will ring the bell at NASDAQ HQ this morning to celebrate its recent up listing from OTC. The company has been riding high since it reported the advance and is up currently about 130% on the year after a 1 for 4 reverse split went into effect May 20th. It's lead brain cancer candidate just completed a phase II, and is heading into a pivotal trial on the back of successful discussions with the FDA.The question is, now it's NASDAQ listed, where does it go from here?Let's kick things off with a quick introduction to DelMar. The company has developed a drug called VAL-083. As mentioned, it's a brain cancer target, and specifically it's going after a type of brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM. It's a super aggressive, incredibly fast growing tumor, and it's the most commonly diagnosed form of brain cancer in the US. There's no cure, and treatment options are pretty limited. Surgery is difficult because it's in the brain, and chemo is ineffective in a large portion of patients because of what's called MGMT. MGMT is an enzyme (with a high prevalence in brain cancer patients) that makes cancerous cells in GBM immune to the current standard of care chemo drug, TMZ.VAL-083 is an alternative to TMZ that has a similar mechanism of action, but doesn’t seem to lose efficacy as a result of MGMT. That's what DelMar is banking on. Trials to date seem to support this theory, with the drug repeatedly outperforming TMZ in GBM treatment, while maintaining a pretty similar safety and tolerability profile.From the company's latest update:

Taken together with historical and recently demonstrated clinical activity, these results suggest that VAL-083's distinct anti-cancer mechanism has the potential to overcome chemo-resistance and surpass the standard of care in the treatment of GBM.

All this means nothing, however, if the pivotal doesn’t go well. That's what we're looking at going forward. Management wants to kick things off before the end of the year, and it looks to be on track to do just that – with one hurdle required.Finance.Pivotals are always expensive. A phase II/III (which is what the company is planning) in the oncology space is even more so. The uplisting will help, and a pro forma look at the company's cash balance suggests there's enough in the bank to tide at least initiate, if not fund the entirety of, the first part of the pivotal.

From April 29, 2016 through June 8, 2016, including previously disclosed sales, the Company has sold a total of $7,057,900 of gross proceeds of its Series B Preferred Shares in private placements

This should tide things over, but there's no way the company can avoid dilution further down the line. Be it to complete the pivotal, or to fund an NDA submission (which in itself costs close to $2 million this year) DelMar is going to have to raise through one method or another, and this raise will almost certainly be dilutive to an early stage holding. The hope is that by that point, there's enough value unlocked by phase III data that the company can minimize the dilution.This one's all about the next twelve months. The initiation of the pivotal is a major upside catalyst, and as data starts to roll out from the trial, we should get some idea of whether it's worth bearing the brunt of a dilutive raise in order to get an early exposure.As data hits press, we'll update readers with our interpretation of it, and what to expect going forward as a result. Don't miss these updates, subscribe by entering your email address below. You'll also pick up a free eBook as a bonus.Disclosure: We have no position in DMPI and have not been compensated for this article.