Tiziana Life Sciences

Tiziana Life Sciences

Tiziana Life Sciences was incorporated by serial biotech entrepreneur Gabriele Cerrone in 1998, initially operating on the London Stock Exchange before migrating its listing to the Nasdaq in November 2020. Cerrone, who also co-founded Cardiff Oncology and chaired Hepion Pharmaceuticals, has a history of structuring public biotech vehicles that target narrow, high-risk clinical pipelines. The firm operated as a publicly traded company for over two decades until February 2023, when Cerrone took it private through a merger with a subsidiary of Plan B Merger Sub, Inc., valued at approximately $1.20 per share in a cash transaction that closed in early 2024. The move removed the company from the public reporting environment. The firm deploys capital exclusively into the clinical development of its proprietary intranasal foralumab program, a fully human anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody. Tiziana holds a patent portfolio covering intranasal and oral delivery of anti-CD3 molecules. The primary indication is non-active secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, where an FDA-allowed expanded access program has reported improved clinical outcomes in a small patient cohort. Additional exploratory programs target Alzheimer's disease and long COVID patients with neuroinflammation. The firm does not maintain a diversified asset-class allocation and has no fund commitments or co-investment structures typical of a traditional asset manager — it operates more like a single-product, internally funded biotech platform. Existing clinical sites are concentrated in the United States, with neuroimaging and immunology collaborations at Harvard-affiliated laboratories and larger neurodegenerative research centers. Tiziana operates with a small executive team, led by Cerrone as Executive Chairman from his New York base and Matthew Davis, an MD with prior roles at Biogen and Allergan, as Chief Medical Officer. The firm maintains additional administrative operations in the UK and Bermuda. It does not run a venture arm, a foundation, or a multi-family wealth platform. March 2024: Tiziana published positive six-month interim data from its expanded access program in a peer-reviewed journal, reporting stable or improved clinical scores across a majority of the 10 enrolled patients. In August 2024, the firm presented new neuroimaging biomarker data showing reductions in microglial activation measured by PET scans (per the firm's press release, August 2024). These data points support an Investigational New Drug application for a pivotal trial — a binary clinical milestone that will define the next phase of the firm's existence. Tiziana's structural differentiator lies in its drug-delivery mechanism rather than its corporate form. Intranasal anti-CD3 treatment bypasses the blood-brain barrier through the olfactory nerve, a route that differentiates it from systemic monoclonal antibody approaches used by larger neurology players. The firm's decision to go private in 2024 also isolates it from equity-market scrutiny typical of early-stage public biotechs, giving Cerrone full discretion over clinical timelines and financing decisions — but also leaving external allocators with no transparency into its capitalization or cash runway.