Avacta Group PLC Commercial Partnership in the Agri-bio Market (3253C)
January 16 2015 - 2:00AM
UK Regulatory
TIDMAVCT
RNS Number : 3253C
Avacta Group PLC
16 January 2015
16 January 2015
Avacta Group plc
("Avacta" or "the Group")
Commercial Partnership Targeting the Agri-bio Reagents
Market
Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the global provider of proprietary
diagnostic tools, consumables and reagents for human and animal
healthcare announces that it has entered into a commercial
agreement with Agrisera AB, a Sweden based, global provider of
antibodies to the protein sciences market, to develop Affimer based
purification systems for proteomics applications.
Agrisera has been established for over thirty years and
specialises in development and marketing of antibodies and related
research tools globally, offering several thousand antibodies for
plant and algal cell biology research. They are joint market
leaders in the plant antibodies market with Merck-Millipore with a
27% share each.
Plant proteomics is a rapidly growing field like human
proteomics in which scientists are working to understand the
relationships between proteins and diseases to drive a revolution
in the way issues such as food security, safety and human health
are addressed. In proteomics, samples are often dominated by highly
abundant proteins making it difficult to detect the rare proteins
that may be the most important in a disease process. Therefore,
frequently, samples need to be enriched for non-abundant proteins
to facilitate proteomic analysis. This is currently done using
antibodies to extract the highly abundant proteins using a bead
based affinity column.
Affimers are an engineered alternative to antibodies. They have
advantages over antibodies in this depletion application because of
their small size, leading to higher packing density and therefore
greater capacity of the depletion system, lower manufacturing cost,
greater stability and robustness.
The market opportunity, whilst difficult to quantitate
accurately, is significant. Avacta Life Sciences and Agrisera have
entered into an agreement to develop Affimer based depletion
products with improved performance and economics compared to the
current systems. The agreement provides for commercialisation to be
carried out by Agrisera under an undisclosed revenue sharing
model.
Dr Alastair Smith, Avacta Group Chief Executive Officer,
commented:
"Agrisera are a well respected, high quality provider of
research tools for plant sciences research and I am delighted that
we will be working with them to develop the first Affimer based
product for the agri-bio market.
"This market, in general, is not as well served as the human
life sciences market by the large antibody suppliers, so there is a
great opportunity for Avacta to establish Affimers in a growing
market where there are many gaps, as well as pushing forward with
our plans to address the human life sciences market."
Greger Nordlund, Chief Executive Officer of Agrisera, said:
"We are very pleased to enter into this collaboration with
Avacta employing their promising Affimer technology. This
collaboration is fully in line with Agrisera's strategy to develop
and provide novel, effective tools and reagents to the research
community."
Enquiries:
Avacta Group plc Tel: +44 (0) 844 414
Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer 0452
Tim Sykes, Chief Financial Officer www.avacta.com
Numis Securities Limited Tel: +44 (0) 207 260
Michael Meade / Freddie Barnfield - Nominated 1000
Adviser www.numiscorp.com
James Black - Corporate Broking
Media Enquiries Tel: +44 (0) 207 933
Walbrook PR Ltd 8780
Mike Wort / Anna Dunphy 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, Optim,
www.avactaanalytical.com to help reduce the cost and risk of drug development.
--------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------
Avacta Animal Health Veterinary diagnostics reference laboratory
www.avactaanimalhealth.com and diagnostic kit provider.
--------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------
Avacta Life Sciences Novel non-antibody affinity reagents called
www.avactalifesciences.com Affimers, with a wide range of Life Science
applications in diagnostics, drug and biomarker
discover and biotech research and development.
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This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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