22 May 2017

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")

Two US biotech companies licence Affimer reagents for research use

Exclusive licence deals follow successful custom Affimer evaluations

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer^® biotherapeutics and research reagents, is pleased to announce that two leading US biotech companies have separately taken exclusive rights to Affimer reagents for research and development use, to support their respective drug development programmes.

Avacta has developed the Affimer technology platform to provide proprietary, high quality reagents to Life Sciences companies for therapeutic, diagnostic and research use. The Company continues to deliver on its licensing model under which it provides bespoke Affimer reagents, via fully funded development projects, for third party research use, incorporation into both diagnostic and other products, and for therapeutic development. 

Following technical evaluations, Avacta has agreed exclusive licensing arrangements for bespoke Affimer reagents with two US based biotech companies. In line with deals of this nature and sensitivity commercial terms cannot be disclosed.

The first, a global top fifteen biotech company, needed an Affimer reagent to capture a human protein with no cross-reactivity against the same protein from other species commonly used in drug development, such as rodent. No antibodies exist that are capable of providing this "species specificity" and the new Affimer reagent will allow the biotech partner to develop previously unavailable assays to support its drug development activities. A number of Affimer reagents which met these demanding criteria were generated by Avacta and, under the terms of the agreement, the biotech partner has been allowed to take exclusive rights to one of those Affimer molecules for research use.

The second, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, wished to detect a certain human protein, mutations of which are known to lead to worse overall survival rates in some cancers. This protein is one of a group of very similar proteins and no antibodies are available that can differentiate reliably between the different members of this protein family. Avacta was able to generate several Affimer reagents that met these requirements and the US biopharmaceutical company has taken exclusive rights to one of these Affimer reagents to support its in-house drug discovery programmes in oncology.

Dr Alastair Smith, Avacta Group Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"These two custom Affimer reagent licensing deals are further evidence of the ability of Affimer technology to meet challenging requirements for use in real world applications when, to date, antibodies have been unable to provide a satisfactory solution.

At this early stage of commercialisation such successes are important factors in building awareness and adoption of the Affimer technology, which is key to allowing us to deliver on our strategy of executing therapeutic and diagnostic licensing deals.

This excellent progress follows the recent exclusive licensing deal with a top three global diagnostics company and I look forward to being able to update the market again in the near future." 

ENDS

Notes to Editors

For further information from Avacta Group plc, please contact:

About Avacta Group plc (www.avacta.com)

Avacta's principal focus is on its proprietary Affimer^® technology which is a novel engineered alternative to antibodies that has wide application in Life Sciences for diagnostics, therapeutics and general research and development.

Antibodies dominate markets worth in excess of $50bn despite their shortcomings. Affimer technology has been designed to address many of these negative performance issues, principally; the time taken to generate new antibodies, the reliance on an animal's immune response, poor specificity in many cases, and batch to batch variability. Affimer technology is based on a small protein that can be quickly generated to bind with high specificity and affinity to a wide range of protein targets.

Avacta has a pre-clinical biotech development programme with an in-house focus on immuno-oncology and bleeding disorders as well as partnered development programmes. Avacta is commercialising non-therapeutic Affimer reagents through licensing to developers of life sciences research tools and diagnostics.