Avacta Group PLC Philippe Cotrel Appointed Chief Commercial Officer (8242M)
January 25 2016 - 02:00AM
UK Regulatory
TIDMAVCT
RNS Number : 8242M
Avacta Group PLC
25 January 2016
25 January 2016
Avacta Group plc
("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")
Avacta Appoints Philippe Cotrel as Chief Commercial Officer
Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer(R)
biotherapeutics and research reagents, is pleased to announce the
appointment of Philippe Cotrel as Chief Commercial Officer of
Avacta, with immediate effect. Philippe joins Avacta from Abcam,
where he held the role of Commercial Operations Director. Philippe
will lead the Group's commercial strategy and business development
activities, and will drive the commercialisation of the Affimer
technology as both research reagents and biotherapeutics.
Dr Philippe Cotrel, a protein chemist by training, has over
twenty years' commercial experience in sales, marketing and
customer support in the life sciences sector having held senior
positions in Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, Oxford Glycosciences,
Affymetrix and Abcam. Whilst at Affymetrix, at that time the
inventor and market leader of commercial microarrays, Philippe was
appointed General Manager and Vice President of Commercial
Operations in Europe with responsibility for European commercial
operations, generating approximately GBP65m in sales made up of
capital equipment, consumables and services. Philippe joined Abcam
in 2008 as Commercial Director and has been responsible for sales
and marketing activities, successfully growing revenue from
GBP36.7m to GBP144m over a 7-year period. He managed regional
offices in Boston, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai and was
responsible for all global customer facing functions, as well as
business development activities for the service and in vitro
diagnostics divisions of the business.
The appointment of Philippe completes a five strong Senior
Leadership Team which, along with Philippe, comprises: Dr Amrik
Basran (Chief Scientific Officer) who leads the therapeutics
development programme; Dr Matt Johnson (Chief Technology Officer)
who is responsible for R&D and technical operations; Mr Tony
Gardiner (Group Chief Financial Officer) and Dr Alastair Smith
(Group Chief Executive Officer). Dr Smith and Mr Gardiner are main
Board directors. The other members of the Senior Leadership Team
are not currently main Board directors.
Dr Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Avacta, said:
"I am delighted that Philippe has joined the team at Avacta to
drive the commercial strategy and lead the commercial operations
for the Affimer technology. During the past year we have made
considerable progress demonstrating the power of the Affimer
technology as both a research tool and as a therapeutic platform
both in-house and with partners and customers. Philippe joins us
having spent over twenty years in senior commercial positions in
successful life sciences companies. I am very confident that his
wealth of market knowledge and experience will allow Philippe to
build on our early successes to help deliver the potential of this
exciting technology."
Commenting on his appointment, Philippe Cotrel said:
"I am very pleased to be joining Avacta at this exciting point
in the development of the Affimer technology. I see many
opportunities to leverage the unique strengths of Affimer reagents
to provide a new set of tools for life science researchers, and to
complement antibodies. The additional potential of Affimers as a
therapeutic platform is very significant and I relish the
opportunity to work with the Senior Leadership Team to drive the
commercial strategy forward and help Affimers reach their full
potential."
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
Affimer reagents through custom Affimer services to provide bespoke
solutions to customers and via a growing on-line catalogue of
Affimer reagents.
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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