Avacta Group PLC Summary of Capital Markets Day
February 08 2018 - 2:00AM
RNS Non-Regulatory
TIDMAVCT
Avacta Group PLC
08 February 2018
8 February 2018
Avacta Group plc
("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")
Capital Markets Day
Strong Progress and Milestones Outlined to 2021
Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer(R)
biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to provide a review of
progress against the objectives set in 2015 that were outlined at
its Capital Markets Day, which took place on 7 February 2018 for
financial analysts and institutional investors. The Group outlined
the milestones that it expects to achieve over the next few years
as it aims to build a clinical phase pipeline of Affimer
therapeutics and a recurring revenue stream from Affimer
reagents.
During the presentation, Dr Alastair Smith, Chief Executive
Officer, reviewed the size of the opportunity presented by the
Affimer technology in the life sciences markets and reiterated the
two focal points of the Avacta business model: to build a reagents
business in non-therapeutic markets with long term recurring
revenue and to grow a pipeline of Affimer therapeutics for
development in-house and partnering.
Dr Smith further reviewed the excellent progress that the Group
has made against all the objectives set out in 2015, namely:
1) Developing the first Affimer therapeutic candidate for clinical development
2) Building a pipeline of therapeutic Affimers and enabling
Affimer platform technologies for licensing or future in-house
development
3) Securing further Affimer therapeutic license/partnering deals
4) Growing a custom Affimer revenue stream with the potential for long-term royalties.
Avacta has developed a large number of lead Affimer molecules in
its first programme, a PD-L1 antagonist, and is on track to make an
IND filing in 2019/2020 and to begin phase 1 clinical trials in
2020. Dr Smith pointed out that the immuno-oncology field is
focusing on combination therapies and that the PD-L1 assets that
have been developed to date provide a backbone for future
combinations with, for example, LAG-3 inhibitors, which the Group
is also developing.
The Group has now established a pipeline of ten
discovery/pre-clinical programmes from which it expects to select
the most promising candidates to build a clinical pipeline of two
or three programmes. Dr Amrik Basran, Chief Scientific Officer,
also highlighted the recent development of the Affimer XT(TM)
platform technology which can extend the time that another Affimer
drug spends in the blood stream. Affimer XT can also be licensed to
third parties to be used in conjunction with any other drug for
which extending the serum half-life would create a bio-better.
The partnerships that have been established since 2015 were
reviewed and the next milestones were discussed. Dr Smith outlined
the importance of data demonstrating the benefits of the Affimer
technology, particular in-vivo data, in securing licensing deals
with large pharmaceutical companies and indicated that Asia was a
region that the Group would be targeting in the near future to
secure partnerships.
The Affimer reagents business model was discussed and the
growing momentum in terms of pipeline, number of ongoing
evaluations, published scientific articles and revenue was also
presented. Dr Smith reviewed the potential in terms of longer term
royalties from reagent licensing deals and noted that the valuation
of such a recurring revenue stream would underpin the current
market capitalization on its own, meaning that there is significant
upside from the Affimer therapeutic programmes.
Finally, Dr Smith outlined the high level objectives for
2018-2021, which are to establish the recurring revenue stream from
Affimer reagent licenses and to become a clinical stage biotech
with multiple clinical stage programmes.
The Capital Markets Day presentation may be downloaded from
Avacta's web site at:
https://www.avacta.com/investors/documents.
- Ends -
For further information from Avacta Group plc, please
contact:
Avacta Group plc Tel: +44 (0) 844 414
Alastair Smith, Chief Executive 0452
Officer www.avacta.com
Tony Gardiner, Chief Financial
Officer
finnCap Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 207 220
Geoff Nash / Giles Rolls 0500
- Nominated Adviser www.finncap.com
Tim Redfern / Alice Lane
/ Nikita Jain - Corporate
Broking
Tel: +44 (0) 203 705
WG Partners 9318
Nigel Birks / Nigel Barnes Tel: +44 (0) 203 705
David Wilson / Claes Spang 9217
www.wgpartners.co.uk
Zyme Communications (Trade Tel: +44 (0)7787 502
and Regional Media) 947
Katie Odgaard katie.odgaard@zymecommunications.com
Yellow Jersey PR (Financial Tel: +44 (0)7764 947137
Media and IR) avacta@yellowjerseypr.com
Sarah Hollins
To register for Avacta news alerts by email go to
www.avacta.com/investor-news-email-alerts
About 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 $100bn 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.
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
NRABIGDDXSGBGIR
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 08, 2018 02:00 ET (07:00 GMT)
Avacta (LSE:AVCT)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Avacta (LSE:AVCT)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024