NA Proactive news snapshot: Benchmark Metals, FansUnite Entertainment, PreveCeutical Medical, Essex Minerals ...

Benchmark Metals Inc (CVE:BNCH) (OTCQB:CYRTF) has unveiled encouraging early drill assays from the Cliff Creek zone of its flagship Lawyers gold and silver project in British Columbia, which it said show good potential for robust mine economics. One hole showed almost continuous mineralization from near-surface to higher-grades at depth, which should favorably impact the future mineral resource and pit-shell design, the firm added. Benchmark has so far completed nearly 40,000 metres from 195 holes as part of an up to 100,000-metre program planned for this year.

FansUnite Entertainment Inc (CSE:FANS) (OTCPINK:FUNFF), a provider of online gaming technology, announced on Wednesday that its wholly-owned subsidiary Askott Entertainment has signed a partnership agreement with Las Vegas-based GameCo LLC, a pioneer in skill-based iGaming products. The Vancouver-based group said the partnership will introduce Askott Entertainment’s e-Sports iGaming platform, Chameleon, to the regulated market in the United States. GameCo holds US gaming licenses in nearly 30 jurisdictions including New Jersey and Nevada. Askott Entertainment will leverage its partner’s license infrastructure by enabling GameCo to become an official reseller of the Chameleon e-Sports betting platform to new and existing partners which will include US-based casino operators.

PreveCeutical Medical Inc (CSE:PREV) (OTCQB:PRVCF) announced Tuesday that it has identified promising lead peptides for its opioid-replacement pain-relieving drug, a key step in development.  The effort is part of an analgesic (read: pain relief) program the company launched in 2018 to develop peptide-based therapeutics for moderate-to-severe pain and inflammation. Peptides are made up of short chains of amino acids, which themselves are the building blocks of proteins. Now, the company has several such peptides that have been shown to be stable in a pair of independent assays and that are selective for the opioid receptor. Select peptides have been found to be highly potent when screened in a cell inhibition assay, the company said. The lead peptides are currently being evaluated in an inflammatory pain model, and the outcome from those studies will be reported soon.

Essex Minerals Inc (CVE:ESX) said it has got off to a great start at the Cumberland joint venture project in Australia, hitting high-grade gold and silver mineralization in the first drill hole. The hole hit 18.8 grams per ton (g/t) gold and 160.6 g/t silver over 6.4 metres (m) from 139.5m to 145.9m depth, including 63.6 g/t gold and 462.7 g/t silver over 1.7m, the firm said. It also encountered 9.9 g/t of the yellow metal and 191 g/t silver over 0.5m from a depth of 152.5m to 153m. “To intersect high-grade gold and silver mineralization in the first drill hole on an early-stage project is a testimony to the quality of structural interpretation and target generation exploration work undertaken over the past six years by our joint venture partner KNX Resources Limited,” Essex CEO Paul Loudon noted in a statement.

Ipsidy Inc (OTCQB:IDTY) said it has partnered with Login ID Inc to provide new tools to fight fraud in online activities. The mobile biometric identity solutions provider said it will integrate its biometric identity verification platform, Proof, with LoginID’s fast identity online (FIDO) as a service platform to offer seamless FIDO2 web authentication and login services. FIDO2 enables easy and secure logins to websites and applications via biometrics, mobile devices and FIDO Security Keys. It also eliminates the need for passwords by using a combination of biometric verification and device authentication via cryptographic security.

Lucky Minerals Inc (CVE:LKY) (OTCMKTS:LKMNF) said Wednesday it continues to expand its recently discovered El Garo target on the firm’s Fortuna 1 concession in southern Ecuador. El Garo now covers an approximate area of 1.6 kilometres by 800 metres, the Vancouver-based company told shareholders. The epithermal target lies on the Fortuna 1 concession on the wider Fortuna project, a 550-square kilometre area located in a highly prospective and underexplored gold belt in the South American country. Analysis of satellite imagery of the Fortuna 1 concession indicates that El Garo appears to be spatially related to the margins of a circular feature that measures around five kilometres in diameter and could represent “excellent” exploration targets, Lucky Minerals told investors.

Revive Therapeutics Ltd (CSE:RVV) (OTCMKTS:RVVTF) said it has stuck a clinical trial agreement (CTA) with the University of Wisconsin System (UWS) to advance its psilocybin therapy for the potential treatment of methamphetamine use disorder. The disorder is caused by the recurrent use of the substance methamphetamine and causes various problems including physical withdrawal, increasing use, and failure to meet responsibilities at work or school. Life sciences group Revive is developing its oral dosage forms of psilocybin -  the chemical found in magic mushrooms – to treat a variety of diseases and disorders.

KULR Technology Group Inc (OTCQB:KULR) said Wednesday it has commenced work on helping establish updated industry safety standards for lithium battery packaging used to ship batteries commercially.  The company in April struck a partnership with Hazmat Safety Consulting, an organization with over 60 years of combined experience in developing, influencing, and interpreting lithium battery safety regulations for the safe transport of lithium batteries. KULR is this week participating in meetings of the United Nations Transport of Dangerous Goods Sub-Committee Informal Working Group to establish test methods and criteria by which lithium batteries can be more effectively regulated based on their inherent hazards. The California-based company said it will also present to a subcommittee of the Transportation Research Board on the Prevention of Thermal Runaway Propagation in Lithium Batteries.

Fireweed Zinc Ltd (CVE:FWZ) (OTCMKTS:FWEDF) announced on Wednesday that drilling has started on its 100%-owned Macmillan Pass zinc-lead-silver project in Yukon, Canada. This is in addition to the fieldwork already in progress on the 544-kilometer property since July, that includes geophysical, geochemical, and geological work. The Vancouver-based mineral exploration company said most of the drilling this season will be at the Boundary Zone, further testing the wide and high-grade mineralization intersected in 2019. New discovery targets will also be drilled, including the 240 Mile Target.

District Metals Corp (CVE:DMX) is getting back into the field at the highly prospective polymetallic Tomtebo project in Sweden. The Vancouver-based company said Wednesday that field work has begun on the property, starting with geological mapping, prospecting and geochemical sampling near the former Tomtebo Mine and expanding throughout the 5,144-hectare property. Having recently finished compiling historical trill results around the formerly producing mine, District said it will review available historic drill core from Tomtebo starting in mid-September.

1933 Industries Inc (CSE:TGIF) (OTCQX:TGIFF), a cannabis consumer packaged goods company, announced Wednesday that CEO Paul Rosen has been appointed to its board of directors. The company noted that Rosen has been involved with 1933 Industries in the capacities of strategic investor, advisor and most recently as chief executive, instituting a high level of stewardship and financial oversight that is guiding the company into its next phase of development. Leveraging his extensive experience in the cannabis industry as one of its earliest and most active entrepreneurs and company builders, 1933 Industries said Rosen brings vast corporate governance expertise to his new board position, having co-founded and served as CEO of PharmaCan Capital Corp that was later rebranded to The Cronos Group (NASDAQ:CRON) (TSE:CRON).

Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc (CSE:AGN) (OTCQB:AGNPF), the drug repurposing company, told investors Wednesday it has now enrolled a third of the patients it is targeting for its multinational Phase 2b/3 human study of Ifenprodil to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) – namely 50. The trial will begin as a Phase 2b study of using a total of 150 patients. If there is positive preliminary data, it will move directly into a Phase 3 trial. Data from the Phase 2b study will determine the number of patients needed to reach statistical significance in the Phase 3 trial.

MagicMed Industries Inc said it has completed an oversubscribed brokered private placement which raised gross proceeds of $1,642,880 to fund the development of its portfolio of psychedelic derivative molecules. Following the offering, the privately-owned Calgary-based company issued 6,571,520 new common shares at a price of $0.25 per share. The company now has 20,111,520 common shares outstanding held by 186 respective shareholders. The company intends to use the new funds to expand its scientific team and expedite the development of MagicMed’s Psybrary, a molecular derivatives library designed to be a key platform for the psychedelics industry to develop new patented products.

Tetra Bio-Pharma Inc (TSE:TBP) (OTCQB:TBPMF) announced Wednesday that the in-life phase of a trial of its CBD-based cancer pain drug QIXLEEF has begun after the drug was shipped by its producer Aphria Inc. The trial, known as Plenitude, will test the efficacy and safety of inhaled QIXLEEF for the relief of pain in 78 cancer patients. Since getting the nod from the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in November, Tetra has been working with Aphria to manufacture sufficient quantities of high-quality pharmaceutical GMP grade QIXLEEF. The Plenitude trial will take place at 10 clinical sites in the US and utilize a US Drug Enforcement Agency-licensed pharmacy for distribution. It is a four-week double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, parallel group design trial of 78 adult patients with advanced incurable disease.

Genprex, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNPX) has announced the appointment of William Gannon, MD, MBA as the company’s vice president of Regulatory Affairs. The clinical-stage gene therapy company, which is developing potentially life-changing technologies for patients with cancer and diabetes, noted that Dr Gannon brings more than 30 years of experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries to the company, with expertise in clinical development, regulatory affairs and commercialization of products, and a strong background in oncology and gene therapy. Dr Gannon will be responsible for managing the company’s regulatory affairs for its upcoming clinical trials that combine its lead drug candidate, GPX-001 for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), with AstraZeneca’s targeted therapy Tagrisso (osimertinib) and with immunotherapy Keytruda (pembrolizumab).

BetterLife Pharma Inc (CSE:BETR) (OTCQB:BETRF) (FRA:NPAT) has said Eleanor Fish will continue to play a key role as part of the company’s scientific advisory board after being appointed to the Canadian government’s coronavirus (COVID-19) task force. The biotechnology company said Fish, who is an accomplished scientist with a focus on interferon activity against a variety of viruses including SARS-CoV-2, SARS, Ebola and Zika, will continue to guide its current and future clinical programs, including its research and development strategy for AP-003, a patent-pending interferon a2b (IFNa2b) inhalation formulation that could serve as a possible therapeutic against COVID-19.

Humanigen, Inc. (OTCMKTS:HGEN) has said that Cameron Durrant, its chief executive officer, Dale Chappell, its chief scientific officer, and Timothy Morris, its chief operating and financial officer will present company overviews and business updates at the following upcoming investor conferences: LD Micro 500 Conference at 2.20pm on Thursday, September 3, 2020; Baird’s 2020 Global Healthcare Conference at 3.45pm on Wednesday, September 9, 2020; HC Wainwright 22nd Annual Global Investment Conference at 9.30am ET on Wednesday, September 16, 2020; Oppenheimer Fall Healthcare Life Sciences & MedTech Summit at 10.50am on Wednesday, September 23, 2020. The conferences are being held in a virtual format. Webcast information for these events will be available on Humanigen’s investor page at https://www.humanigen.com/investor-materials. Archived replays will be available on the company website for 30 days following each event.

OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX:OTCM), the operator of financial markets for over 10,000 US and global securities, has announced that Zion Oil & Gas, Inc. (OTCQX:ZNOG), an oil and gas explorer in Israel, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Zion Oil & Gas previously traded on NASDAQ. Jason Paltrowitz, executive vice president of Corporate Services at OTC Markets Group said: “Trading on OTCQX will allow Zion Oil & Gas, Inc. to provide an investor-friendly trading experience, and a transparent, cost-effective alternative to a US stock exchange listing. Streamlined market requirements for OTCQX are designed to help companies lower the cost and complexity of being publicly traded, while providing transparent trading for their investors.” Zion CEO, Robert Dunn. added: “We are excited to be trading on the OTCQX Best Market and our future relationship with the OTC Markets Group for the continued success of Zion Oil & Gas, Inc. We are thankful to our shareholders and believe the lower cost will maximize the investment dollars of our shareholders.”

Story by ProactiveInvestors