Abzena plc

Issue of Ordinary shares 

Cambridge, UK, 24 January 2017 - Abzena plc (AIM: ABZA, 'Abzena' or the 'Company'), the life sciences group providing services and technologies to enable the development and manufacture of biopharmaceutical products, announces that pursuant to the successful completion of the initial vesting period of the restricted stock units issued to employees on the acquisition of The Chemical Research Solution LLC (known as 'TCRS') in December 2015, an application has been made to the London Stock Exchange for the admission of 715,772 new ordinary shares of £0.002 each ('New Ordinary Shares') to trading on AIM. Admission of the New Ordinary Shares is expected to take place at 8:00am on 27 January 2017.

The New Ordinary Shares rank pari passu with the Company's existing issued ordinary shares.

Following admission of the New Ordinary Shares to AIM, the Company's enlarged issued share capital will comprise 137,846,327 ordinary shares of £0.002 each with voting rights. No shares of the Company are held in treasury. The total number of voting rights in the Company is therefore 137,846,327. The figure of 137,846,327 ordinary shares may be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change in their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the Financial Conduct Authority's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.

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About Abzena

Abzena (AIM: ABZA) provides proprietary technologies and complementary services to enable the development and manufacture of biopharmaceutical products, a growing area that requires specialist knowledge and expertise. The Group has a global customer base which includes the majority of the top 20 biopharmaceutical companies as well as large and small biotech companies and academic groups.

The term "Abzena inside" is used by Abzena to describe products that have been created using its proprietary technologies and are being developed by its partners, and include Composite Human Antibodies™ and ThioBridge™ Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs). Abzena has the potential to earn future licence fees, milestone payments and/or royalties on "Abzena inside" products.

Abzena offers the following services and technologies across its principal sites in Cambridge (UK), San Diego, California (USA) and Bristol, Pennsylvania (USA).

·      Immunogenicity assessment, protein engineering to create humanized antibodies and deimmunised therapeutic proteins, and cell line development for manufacture.

·      Contract process development and manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, including monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins, vaccines, and gene therapy and cell therapy products, for preclinical and clinical studies.

·      Proprietary site-specific conjugation technologies for antibody drug conjugate development and solutions for optimizing the therapeutic properties of biopharmaceuticals.

·      Contract chemistry and bioconjugation business focused on ADCs and is establishing the capability to manufacture ADCs to GMP standards.

For more information, please see www.abzena.com