Coiled Therapeutics’ 2025 annual report is really a story of two companies. The numbers for the year itself still reflect the old Roquefort Therapeutics – small, pre-revenue, cash-hungry and reshuffling its portfolio. But the bit that matters most for investors sits around the year-end and just after it: the company has reinvented itself around AO-252, a clinical-stage cancer drug candidate, and raised fresh money to push it forward.
That makes this RNS more important than a standard annual report. It is not just a tidy-up of last year’s accounts – it is the financial paperwork behind a full-blown strategic reset.
Coiled Therapeutics annual report 2025: the key numbers behind the strategic reset
| Metric | Figure | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | £nil | This is still a pre-revenue biotech, so valuation rests on clinical progress rather than sales. |
| Loss for 2025 | £3,362,074 | Losses widened sharply, mainly due to impairment charges and deal costs. |
| Closing cash at 31 December 2025 | £78,054 | Very low year-end cash, showing why the later fundraise was essential. |
| Post year-end fundraise | £8.5 million gross | Gave the business breathing room to fund AO-252 through key milestones. |
| Net fundraise proceeds | Approximately £7.7 million | Directors say this supports operations for at least 12 months. |
| AO-252 Clinical Benefit Rate | 80% | This is the standout number in the whole release. |
| AO-252 licence consideration | £31.875 million | Paid in shares, so strategically bold but dilutive for existing holders. |
AO-252 transforms Coiled Therapeutics from pre-clinical hopeful into clinical-stage biotech
The biggest change is simple: Coiled has moved away from mainly pre-clinical assets and bought the exclusive worldwide rights to AO-252. This was completed on 27 March 2026, alongside the company changing its name from Roquefort Therapeutics plc to Coiled Therapeutics plc and moving its listing from the Main Market to AIM.
AO-252 is described as a first-in-class TACC3 inhibitor. In plain English, that means it targets a cancer-related protein in a new way, which can be exciting if it works, but it also means more uncertainty than a me-too drug.
For me, this is the right kind of pivot for a micro-cap biotech. Clinical-stage assets usually give investors a much clearer path to value than a spread of early research programmes with years of lab work still ahead.
AO-252 clinical data update: why the 80% Clinical Benefit Rate matters so much
The most interesting part of the RNS is the post year-end clinical update. On 8 April 2026, the company reported an 80% Clinical Benefit Rate, or CBR, in patients receiving AO-252 twice daily. CBR is a measure of how many patients saw their disease stabilise or improve.
That compares with 40% in the once-daily cohort. The company also said 80% of evaluable patients achieved tumour stabilisation or regression, treatment durations exceeded six months in a heavily pre-treated group, no serious adverse events were observed, and the maximum tolerated dose has not yet been reached.
That is properly encouraging early-stage data. It is still Phase I, so nobody sensible should treat this as proof of commercial success, but it is a meaningful signal and exactly the sort of signal that can move a small biotech from speculative to genuinely interesting.
Management has already accelerated the move into dose expansion cohorts in ovarian and prostate cancer. These are larger groups designed to explore activity in selected tumour types, with an enrolment target of 40 patients by Q3 2026 and data readouts expected in H2 2026.
Coiled Therapeutics financial results: ugly historic numbers, but they are not the whole story
The backward-looking numbers are weak, and there is no point pretending otherwise. Revenue was £nil, the group made a loss of £3,362,074, and closing cash fell to just £78,054 from £337,112 a year earlier.
The company also said that, as at 31 December 2025, available resources were not sufficient to cover committed costs and planned activities for at least 12 months. That is the sort of line that would normally ring alarm bells.
However, the crucial point is that the balance sheet changed materially after the year-end. The £8.5 million gross fundraise completed on 27 March 2026, and directors now say the group has adequate financial resources for at least 12 months from the date of the report, with approximately £5.1 million of headroom under the most adverse downside scenario they tested.
There was also a large £2,486,944 impairment charge during 2025. That mainly reflected the write-down of Lyramid-related assets and the MK Cell Therapy programme. In other words, the company has drawn a line under parts of the old story so it can focus on the new one.
Why existing shareholders should care about dilution
This transformation was not free. The company issued 85,000,000 new ordinary shares at 10 pence each to raise the £8.5 million, and 318,750,000 consideration shares at 10 pence each for the AO-252 licence.
That is heavy dilution. Existing investors now own a smaller slice of the business, but crucially it is a smaller slice of a more advanced clinical-stage company rather than a larger slice of a struggling pre-clinical one. Whether that trade-off proves worth it will come down to AO-252 data.
Legacy asset disposals are still unresolved and that adds a bit of messiness
There is still some unfinished business in the old portfolio. The proposed sale of Lyramid to Pleiades Pharma is for total consideration of up to US$10.8 million, and the MK Cell out-licensing deal could bring up to US$25 million in milestone cash payments plus a 1.5% perpetuity royalty on global net sales.
But both transactions had not completed as at the date of the report. They remain contingent on Pleiades completing a fundraising round, and the longstop date has been extended to 31 December 2026.
That means there could still be value there, but investors should not bank it yet. Right now, those assets are optional extras, not the main investment case.
What matters next for Coiled Therapeutics shares in 2026
- Completion of Phase I dose escalation in H1 2026.
- Progress in ovarian and prostate cancer expansion cohorts.
- Comprehensive efficacy and safety data in H2 2026.
- Potential start of partnering discussions if the data stays strong.
- Any update on the STAT-6 siRNA programme, which remains in the group.
The company also plans a next-generation formulation of AO-252 and a combination therapy protocol study in Q3 2026. If those milestones land well, management believes it could move into Phase II registrational planning. That is biotech-speak for work that could support a more formal path toward approval.
My take on the Coiled Therapeutics annual report: more exciting, but still high risk
I think this is a more investable story than the one shareholders had a year ago. The company now has a clear lead asset, early human data, funding in place and a timetable for catalysts. That is a big improvement.
But this is still high-risk biotech. There is no revenue, the historic accounts are weak, dilution has been substantial, and AO-252 remains an early-stage programme where setbacks are always possible.
So the verdict is fairly straightforward. This annual report matters because it confirms that Coiled Therapeutics is no longer really about its past – it is now almost entirely a bet on AO-252. If the H2 2026 data is strong, this could look like a smart and timely reinvention. If not, the new story will come under pressure very quickly.
