Avacta Group PLC Affimer Therapeutic Platform Development Milestone
April 19 2016 - 2:01AM
RNS Non-Regulatory
TIDMAVCT
Avacta Group PLC
19 April 2016
19 April 2016
Avacta Group plc
("Avacta" or "the Group")
Affimer Therapeutic Platform Development Milestone Achieved
Important multi-Affimer formats can be manufactured easily and
with high yields
Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer(R)
biotherapeutics and research reagents, announces that a range of
multimeric Affimer constructs central to its immuno-oncology
programme have been successfully generated and manufactured with
excellent production yields in simple production systems.
The ability to produce a biotherapeutic efficiently during early
development and for clinical trials is an essential attribute that
can make the difference between success and failure. Low
manufacturing yields are a common problem with biotherapeutic
platforms and can lead to significant delays in development because
of lack of availability of material. In extreme cases, the
inability to manufacture the therapeutic product can end a
development programme or limit its availability for patients once
approved.
As set out by the Company during 2015, a critical milestone in
the development of Affimer molecules as a therapeutic platform is
the ease of production of clinically and commercially relevant
therapeutic structures. These include monomers, dimers, trimers and
larger multimers, fusions with other proteins and modification of
the Affimer for PEGylation or drug conjugation. These larger
therapeutic structures are central, for instance, to the high value
immuno-oncology applications such as T-cell recruitment or
multi-specific agonist/antagonist combination therapies on which
the Company is focusing.
The Company has been carrying out a planned programme of work to
generate a range of therapeutic Affimer structures and lab scale
production tests to establish the production yields of these
various product formats. The outcome of the tests has been
excellent. Affimer dimers, trimers and even tetramers have been
produced using simple production methods with no significant
reduction in yield compared with the monomeric Affimer molecule
which has yields that are five to ten times greater than the
Company was targeting as being competitive with other protein
scaffold therapeutic platforms.(1,2)
Other important drug structures have also been demonstrated.
Affimers have been formatted as so called fusion proteins,
including "Fc fusions" which is a potentially important class of
therapeutic molecule combining Affimers with part of an antibody.
Surface modifications to the Affimer for half life extension and to
allow drug conjugates to be formed have also been produced.
Excellent production yields have been achieved for all of these
different constructs.
Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer, commented:
"There are several key attributes that are needed to produce a
good therapeutic protein platform. Of particular importance is the
ability to generate multimeric product formats such as the
bispecific oncology therapies recently reported by Ablynx and
Molecular Partners(1,2) . Critically, it is essential to be able to
manufacture these products with high yield which is what we have
demonstrated. The ease with which we have been able to produce a
wide range of important multi-Affimer structures and fusion
proteins is a strong validation of the Affimer platform and was an
important pre-clinical milestone to be achieved. The data are very
encouraging and bode well for our ongoing programme to develop
best-in-class cancer immuno-therapies."
Dr Amrik Basan, Chief Scientific Officer, added:
"In my extensive experience of developing therapeutic proteins,
the production yields that we have achieved with Affimers, without
the need to employ any complicated and expensive processes, are
very good indeed making it possible to consider generating a wide
range of powerful therapeutic molecules with the knowledge that
they will be commercially viable. We have even been able to make
tetrameric formats containing four Affimers which makes the Affimer
technology highly competitive or superior to comparable therapeutic
protein scaffold platforms that are currently in development."
References
(1) Molecular Partners press releases (27.10.15, 08.01.16)
(2) Ablynx press release (29.01.16)
Enquiries:
Avacta Group plc Tel: +44 (0)
Alastair Smith, Chief Executive 844 414 0452
Officer www.avacta.com
Tony Gardiner, 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
WG Partners Tel: +44 (0)
David Wilson 203 705 9318
Nigel Barnes Tel: +44 (0)
Claes Spang 203 705 9217
www.wgpartners.co.uk
Media Enquiries Tel: +44 (0)
FTI Consulting 203 727 1000
Simon Conway / Natalie Garland-Collins avacta@fticonsulting.com
Notes to Editors
Avacta Group plc (www.avacta.com)
Avacta's principal focus is on its proprietary Affimer(R)
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 oncology and bleeding disorders as well as
several partnered development programmes. Avacta is commercialising
non-therapeutic Affimer reagents through custom Affimer services to
provide bespoke solutions to research and diagnostics customers and
via a small on-line catalogue of Affimer products.
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
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