TIDMAVCT

RNS Number : 9209S

Avacta Group PLC

30 September 2014

30 September 2014

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or the "Group")

Affimer On-line Catalogue Launch

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the global provider of proprietary diagnostic tools, consumables and reagents for human and animal healthcare, announces that Avacta Life Sciences has launched its on-line catalogue of Affimer reagents. There are currently 40 products in the Affimer catalogue.

In May of this year, Avacta raised GBP10m through a placing of ordinary shares with support from existing shareholders as well as new investors. This money was raised to accelerate the commercialisation of Affimers by investing in the scale up of product development, production and commercial operations. The sale of Affimer reagents through an on-line catalogue is one of the major revenue opportunities for Affimers set out at the time of the placing. A further revenue opportunity is to provide bespoke Affimer reagents for life sciences customers in academia and industry by screening Avacta's library of Affimers. The Company is in the process of expanding its business development teams for the US and European markets to deliver this service to market.

Affimers are engineered alternatives to antibodies and have been designed to address many of the negative performance issues currently experienced with antibodies; namely, the time taken to generate a new antibody, specificity and batch to batch variation which can limit their application in many circumstances. Furthermore, there are many targets to which antibodies simply cannot be developed for a range of reasons. The discovery of one such set of targets, referred to as "ubiquitylation" which is an important pathway in many diseases, resulted in the award of the Nobel prize for chemistry over a decade ago and yet, despite the importance of this area of research in drug development and diagnostics, the major antibody companies have struggled to generate antibodies that bind to these targets. The on-line catalogue has a number of Affimers that bind to targets involved in ubiquitylation as well as Affimers that replace some common workhorse antibodies, both representing prime revenue generating targets.

Over the coming months and years the Group intends to grow the catalogue to provide a comprehensive and powerful toolkit for the detection of disease, discovery and validation of new disease biomarkers and drug targets and a range of other applications across life sciences research and industrial development.

Alastair Smith, Chief Executive of Avacta said: "We are very excited about the new online catalogue that makes Affimers available to our customers off the shelf for the first time.

The launch of the catalogue with this initial product set is a demonstration of our capability to deliver Affimers on a commercial basis and is an important first part of the execution of our much wider plan. The processes we have put in place are capable of delivering a vast range of Affimers to add to our catalogue over time.

Our capabilities now enable us to access the market with bespoke Affimers for customers where we are seeing very strong interest in our technologies from major customers."

Enquiries:

 
 Avacta Group plc                      Tel: +44 (0) 
  Alastair Smith, Chief Executive       844 414 0452 
  Officer                               www.avacta.com 
  Tim Sykes, Chief Financial Officer 
 
 Numis Securities Limited              Tel: +44 (0) 
  Michael Meade / Freddie Barnfield     207 260 1000 
  - Nominated Adviser                   www.numiscorp.com 
  James Black - Corporate Broking 
 
 Media Enquiries                                  Tel: +44 (0) 
  Walbrook PR Ltd                                  207 933 8780 
  Anna Dunphy / Mike Wort                          avacta@walbrookpr.com

About Avacta Group plc - www.avacta.com

Avacta Group plc is a global provider of innovative technologies, consumables and reagents for the life science markets, from drug discovery to diagnostics. Avacta operates through three divisions:

 
            Avacta Analytical             High throughput analysis instrument, 
             www.avactaanalytical.com      Optim, to help reduce the cost and 
                                           risk of drug development. 
---------------------------------------  ----------------------------------------- 
            Avacta Animal Health          Veterinary diagnostics reference 
             www.avactaanimalhealth.com    laboratory and diagnostic kit provider. 
---------------------------------------  ----------------------------------------- 
            Avacta Life Sciences          Novel non-antibody affinity reagents 
             www.avactalifesciences.com    called Affimers, with a wide range 
                                           of Life Science applications in 
                                           diagnostics, drug and biomarker 
                                           discover and biotech research and 
                                           development. 
---------------------------------------  -----------------------------------------

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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