Doug Bright

St George Mining has completed a soil sampling and rock chip program over a previously untested area of its flagship Mt Alexander project with assay results expected about mid-January. The company also has plans in place for a new year drill program at its Lithium Star group of projects and at Destiny - a 3,000 square kilometre landholding south-west of Kalgoorlie where a high-grade rare earths discovery, announced just weeks ago, identified numerous potentially lithium-bearing pegmatites.

Radiopharm Theranostics is poised to open a second site for conducting human trials of its RAD 204 treatment for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) having received the green light from Perth’s Hollywood Private Hospital’s Human Research Ethics Committee. The approval follows its successful Brisbane site initiation visit at Princess Alexandra Hospital prior to trials which are slated to begin as soon as next week.

Radiopharm Theranostics has stepped closer to kicking off what it says could be a “game-changing” trial for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after a successful initiation site visit to Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital. The visit was made ahead of the trial that will evaluate the safety and efficacy of the company’s treatment for advanced NSCLC – the most common type of lung cancer.

Novo Resources has committed to stepping up its hunt for gold in 2024 within several priority targets at its Egina Gold Camp and Balla Balla project that both sit in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. The company is awaiting assays from more than 10,500m of drilling at its Becher project and says it gleaned positive shallow results in a maiden RC program at Nunyerry North.

Estrella Resources will use a $1.327 million research-and-development tax rebate from the ATO to repay a loan facility, with about $181,000 in surplus cash to be aimed at further exploring its Carr Boyd nickel project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. The company says it will continue its R&D work into mineralisation genesis and make a further claim at the end of the next financial year.

GreenTech Metals has wrapped up what it says has been a “transformative” year for the company after finishing a maiden diamond drilling program for both its Osborne JV and Ruth Well projects in the West Pilbara region of WA. The program involved four holes for a total of 1611m and was designed to assess stratigraphic and structural aspects of the lithium-rich pegmatites in both areas.

Strickland Metals is finishing off a prosperous 2023 in style, today revealing new assay results from air-core drilling at its Horse Well prospect in Western Australia’s Mid West region, that include a highlight hit of 36m at 1.2g/t gold from 24m, with 16m going 2.5g/t gold from 32m. The company says the intercept highlights new mineralisation potential between its Filly SW and Warmblood resources.

The addition of fluorine to the Australian Government’s list of critical minerals has put ABx Group in prime position to impact global supply after it successfully pilot tested its new fluorine reactor process. The batch-scale testing that involved the processing of waste bath was recently carried out by the company’s 83 per cent-owned subsidiary, Alcore.

AVZ Minerals has laid claim to having the world’s biggest hard-rock lithium deposit after pumping up the resource at its Manono play in the DRC to a whopping 574 million tonnes at 1.63 per cent lithium oxide. It comes on the back of tabling a maiden resource for its Carrière de L’Este pegmatite of 173 million tonnes at 1.58 per cent lithium oxide.

Meeka Metals says it has gathered high-grade gold results from 10 infill air-core drillholes at its St Anne’s resource target about 30km north-east of Meekatharra, including a 7m hit at a grade of 3.51g/t gold with 2m going 9.84g/t. The company says the results are supported by other high-grade intercepts in adjacent holes, including 1m at 13.45g/t gold.

A Strickland Metals decision to lock its full focus on its Marwari target at Yandal in Western Australia is paying almost immediate dividends, with new high-grade gold hits including 24m at 7.4g/t from 29m and a second hole yielding 3m at 8.9g/t gold from 71m. The company says the 24m intersection also contained a 5m slice going 28g/t gold.

Everest Metals has determined a JORC-compliant rubidium-lithium exploration target at its Mt Edon project in WA’s South Murchison region, but says more work is required to quantify the geological system. The company has today outlined a resource target range of between 3.2 and 4.5 million tonnes, with potential grades going 0.23 to 0.35 per cent rubidium oxide and 0.08 to 0.12 per cent lithium oxide.

ABx Group says three runs of its new bath reactor under standard process conditions have removed more than 90 per cent of fluorine from test samples and is producing hydrogen fluoride gas from each batch. The company says metal sulphate samples from the process have been sent for analysis to confirm yields, with results expected next month.

Everest Metals is on the hunt for potential ore-grade gold and base metals mineralisation in an area of about 22 square kilometres at its Revere project in Western Australia’s Mid West region following an initial drilling program. The company interprets the results as evidence of proximity to potentially significant styles of mineralisation such as base metal sedimentary exhalative deposits and possible orogenic gold.

BMG Resources’ second round of drilling at its Bullabulling project near Coolgardie in Western Australia has nailed high-grade gold hits up to 4m at 10.12g/t in shallow drilling and confirmed stacked, lithium-rich pegmatites with a best slice of 4m at 0.56 per cent lithium oxide. The company says it highlights its discovery potential in a “world-class Australian lithium and gold region”.

Gold Mountain’s stream sediment sampling has identified anomalous lithium in four of its five Juremal licences in Brazil and has defined targets for follow-up soil sampling to home in on the sources of the anomalies. The company says the three best stream targets are associated with west-flowing tributaries originating at or beyond the eastern boundaries of its easternmost block of licences.

A GreenTech Metals rock-chip sampling campaign has nailed new lithium hits along an east-west-trending, 2.5km-long pegmatite zone at its Kobe trend in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, with the best results ranging from 1.01 to 2.31 per cent lithium oxide. The company says the results demonstrate the local persistence of high-grade lithium along the western part of the Kobe trend.

Recent RC drilling at Kalgoorlie Gold Mining’s Providence prospect in Western Australia’s Goldfields region has turned up promising gold grades from just 20m depth, with broad runs of lower, but supportive grades prompting thoughts of open-pit mining. Management says the similarity of mineralisation to its adjacent Kirgella Gift prospect – and a possible plunge intersection between the two plots – may provide thicker or higher-grade zones.

Horizon Minerals has extended deep gold mineralisation under its Penny West mine in Western Australia’s Goldfields region and it will be just one of several targets dripping with the yellow metal that the company will further explore next year. Management has also proven two distinct gold mineralisation styles at Kanowna South and intersected supergene gold up to 10g/t at Binduli.

Horizon Minerals has revealed details about its pathway to gold production and a longer-term project pipeline relating to four of the company’s extensive suite of projects, mostly within about 35kms of Kalgoorlie. The details provide a snapshot on the company’s ramp-up work, including bringing on the underground operations at Cannon and Penny’s Find and its open-pit developments at Kalpini and Boorara.

Gold Mountain has applied for 57 exploration licences enclosing more than 100,000 hectares of rare earths terrain in Brazil ¬– and the ground sits right next to a major inferred 510.3-million-tonnes-resource. The company’s new “Down Under” project in the State of Bahia is partly contiguous with Brazilian Rare Earths’ tenure and a resource with an overall grade of 1513ppm total rare earth oxides.

Horizon Minerals has set off on a lithium hunt through its gold-bearing Western Australian tenements after generating new exploration targets in the Goldfields and near the world-renowned Greenbushes project in the State’s South West region. The company says it has been encouraged by its results to date, but more work is now planned as it looks to broaden its operations.

Venture Minerals has produced what it says are exceptional assays of up to almost 7400 parts per million total rare earth oxides in a maiden 25-hole RC drilling program at its new Jupiter target in Western Australia’s Mid West region. Results reveal a remarkable consistency in multiple intercepts of between 12m and 32m thick and ranging on average between 2000ppm and 2500ppm TREO.

GreenTech Metals has revealed West Pilbara pegmatite intersections up to 24.6m thick in a maiden diamond drillhole that reached down to 810.2m at its Osborne joint venture lithium project … with more holes still to come. The company believes its highlight hit from 674m downhole could represent a down-dip extension of a mapped pegmatite at surface.

The State Government has thrown its financial grunt in behind Infinity Mining’s diamond drilling program at the company’s Tambourah South lithium project, with a $149,675 Exploration Incentive Scheme grant. Infinity will fund the balance of the $299,350 program, which will see the drilling of two NQ-diameter diamond holes to depths of up to 300m to evaluate the geology under the project’s pegmatite swarm.

Terrain Minerals has kicked off a maiden air-core drilling campaign at its Larins Lane base metals-gold-silver prospect to test for what it believes could be a deposit analogous to 29Metals’ hulking Golden Grove operation in Western Australia’s Mid West region. The company plans to drill 145 holes for 2500m in two priority categories on three separate main targets and a handful of unexplained anomalies.

Following several recent divestments, Aurumin has made good its promise to home in on its 946,000-ounce Sandstone gold project in Western Australia’s Mid West region after revealing it had secured three new exploration licences. The move more than doubles the company’s presence in the central project area as it gets closer to eradicating an overhanging $6.4 million debt relating to its Sandstone acquisition last year.

Aurumin has continued to level its exploration and financial focus further on its Sandstone gold project in Western Australia after selling the iron ore rights at its Mt Dimer operation to a subsidiary of Mineral Resources. It will retain exposure through progress and royalty payments as part of a $250,000 sale to Polaris Metals for iron ore rights at four of its Mt Dimer tenements.

Chimeric Therapeutics’ mission to beat cancer with its “natural killer” therapy has hit a new high point, with test-tube studies showing a 300 per cent increase in its ability to kill the pancreatic form of the insidious disease. The company’s latest revelations also show its off-the-shelf “CLTX CAR NK” cell therapy recording a 260 per cent jump in killing ovarian cancer.

Infinity Mining’s recent drilling in a big swarm of stacked Pilbara pegmatites has yielded assays of up to 2.1 per cent lithium oxide and supportive rubidium, caesium and tantalum values, with more work to come. The company says its campaign of eight reverse-circulation drillholes for 834m at its Tambourah South project in Western Australia produced several outstanding shallow lithium-caesium-tantalum intercepts.

Askari Metals has jagged a high of 24.5g/t gold in one rock-chip sample from its Myrnas Hill project in Western Australia’s East Pilbara region, while soil samples yielded up to 2g/t, 1.37g/t and other lower gold and nickel spikes. The company says the campaign also recorded elevated nickel responses of up to 1280 parts per million.

A research and development tax rebate of nearly $5 million from the Australian Government will boost Radiopharm Theranostics’ mission to further develop its suite of diagnostic and therapeutic products aimed at beating the cancer scourge. The refund recognises the company’s R&D activity during the 2023 financial year and comes as it prepares to run clinical pancreatic cancer trials in New York.