TIDMAVCT
RNS Number : 8278M
Avacta Group PLC
25 January 2016
25 January 2016
Avacta Group plc
("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")
Pre-close trading update
Solid technical and commercial progress with Affimer(R) reagents
and
initiation of a therapeutics development programme following a
substantial fund raise
Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer(R)
biotherapeutics and research reagents, is today holding its Annual
General Meeting at 2.00 pm GMT. In conjunction with this meeting
the Company is pleased to provide a trading update ahead of its
results for the six months ending 31 January 2016.
Highlights
-- Strong pre-clinical R&D progress for lead Affimer drug
candidates against the PD-L1 immune checkpoint target.
-- Key collaboration initiated with Dr Ramzi Ajjan at the Leeds
General Infirmary to carry out pre-clinical characterisation of
Affimer drug candidates that modulate blood clotting in
pre-clinical models.
-- Affimer technology evaluations started with 13 large pharma
and biotechs, including four of the ten largest pharma companies,
and with several large diagnostics providers and numerous other
commercial partners and academic institutes.
-- Dr Mike Owen, ex- SVP and global Head of Research of
Biopharmaceuticals R&D at GlaxoSmithKline, appointed as
non-Executive Director and Chair of the Scientific Advisory
Board.
-- Appointment today of Dr Philippe Cotrel, ex-Commercial
Operations Director at Abcam, as Chief Commercial Officer (see
separate press release).
-- Appointment of Mr Tony Gardiner as Chief Financial Officer.
-- Successful GBP21m fund raising via a placing of ordinary
shares to support an Affimer therapeutics development
programme.
-- Avacta Animal Health trading at expected levels with further
product launches planned for the second half of the financial
year.
-- Half year revenue of GBP1.0m (GBP0.7m FY15) made up of
GBP0.3m from Avacta Life Sciences and GBP0.7m from Avacta Animal
Health.
The Company expects to announce its Interim Results for the six
months ended 31 January 2016 on Monday 25 April 2016.
Dr Alastair Smith, Avacta Group Chief Executive Officer,
commented:
"I am very pleased with progress in the period. It is good to
see the number and quality of customers and partners that are
evaluating the Affimer technology growing steadily as potential
licensing and commercial relationships arising from these
evaluations are key to maximising medium- and long-term value. We
will continue to focus our resources on supporting these evaluation
projects with partners who can deliver significant commercial
opportunities in the longer term.
The additions to the Senior Leadership Team and to the Board are
particularly important and I am delighted with the recent
appointments.
During the coming months, we will update the market in detail on
the progress of our two principal in-house therapeutic development
programmes that are focused on immune checkpoint inhibitors for
cancer therapies and on modulators of blood clotting. We also
expect to establish new facilities in Cambridge for the expanding
therapeutic development activity under Dr Amrik Basran, and later
in the year to move into larger premises in Wetherby to support the
Affimer reagents development and manufacturing operations."
Avacta Life Sciences
Following the Company's own progress in demonstrating the
potential of Affimers as a therapeutic platform and the
transformational therapeutic partnership that was established with
Moderna Therapeutics in May 2015, Avacta successfully raised GBP21m
net by way of a placing on 3 August 2015 with both existing and new
institutional shareholders.
The proceeds will be used to accelerate the Group's in-house
therapeutic programmes, focusing on oncology and blood clotting
disorders; to support co-development partnerships; and to develop
the therapeutic platform technology for key performance properties
such as half-life extension, targeting and combination therapies.
The primary strategic objective is to progress the first Affimer
therapeutic into the clinic. This is expected to be achieved in
approximately three years and this should be a significant value
inflection point when it occurs.
Good progress has been made in identifying Affimer candidates
that bind to and inhibit the biology of the first selected immune
checkpoint target, PD-L1. A large number of such Affimer candidates
have been identified and are now being evaluated to establish the
strength of their inhibitory effect, their manufacturability and
whether they can be formatted into appropriate drug-like
structures.
The Company has also established a significant research
collaboration with Dr Ramzi Ajjan, a consultant diabetologist and
endocrinologist at the Leeds General Infirmary, to gain access to
his pre-clinical and clinical models of blood clotting. Dr Ajjan
has evaluated Affimer proteins with regard to their potential to
bind to and modulate the behavior of fibrinogen, a key protein in
blood clotting. A two year pre-clinical study has been initiated to
study the effects of certain Affimer reagents on clot formation and
breakdown.
Early data from both of these in-house programmes are
encouraging and the Company will provide a detailed update on
progress and set out the wider therapeutic development objectives
around the time of the 2016 Interim Results.
Also during the period Dr Mike Owen was appointed to the Board
as a non-executive director. Dr Owen was Senior Vice President and
global Head of Research of the Biopharmaceuticals R&D Unit at
GlaxoSmithKline and was responsible for initiating and rapidly
growing GSK's robust pre-clinical and clinical therapeutic antibody
pipeline during the last decade through in-house development as
well as through acquisitions such as Domantis. Dr Owen brings
extensive clinical trial, scientific and commercial experience to
the Company in support of the therapeutics development strategy and
he will establish and chair Avacta's Scientific Advisory Board
which will provide guidance to the Affimer therapeutic development
programmes.
The Company is also providing Affimer reagents as Life Sciences
research tools via a custom Affimer reagent service and a catalogue
of Affimer reagents addressing gaps in the antibody market. The
fundamental benefits of the Affimer technology: high specificity;
rapid generation of new binders; stability and robustness; ability
to address targets which antibodies find difficult or impossible;
and batch to batch consistency are proving successful in generating
widespread customer interest. The Company has also now established
a robust and semi-automated Affimer generation process that is
routinely generating new Affimer reagents for customers and
internal therapeutic programmes.
Since the commercial launch of Affimer reagents late in 2014,
the custom Affimer reagents sales pipeline has grown strongly,
order intake continues steadily and a number of additional Affimer
technology evaluations are underway. The Company is engaged with a
wide range of customers including large pharma and biotechs
(including several of the top ten pharmaceutical companies), a
number of diagnostics providers, several large bioprocessing and
chromatography companies, and several EU, US and Asian academic and
research institutes.
A key aspect of the business model is that a proportion of these
custom Affimer projects and evaluations will lead to longer term
commercial partnerships leading to payments for exclusivity,
development milestones and longer term royalties on sales of
Affimer containing products. The Company is negotiating a
significant number of such commercial partnerships although these
are taking longer than anticipated to complete.
Having achieved good initial commercial traction, the Company
has today announced that it has appointed a Chief Commercial
Officer to build on this early success, lead the commercial
strategy and business development activities, and to drive the
commercialisation of the Affimer technology. Dr Philippe Cotrel has
joined Avacta from Abcam where he was Commercial Operations
Director and was responsible for all sales and marketing
activities, successfully growing revenue from GBP36.7m to GBP144m
over a 7-year period. Please see our separate press release for
more details of his appointment.
The Company has also established relationships with key opinion
leaders (KOLs) in the first area of product development focus -
reagents to address researchers' needs and the study of the
ubiquitin proteasome system; a major area of drug and diagnostics
development. These KOLs include Professor David Kommander of the
Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Professor Sir Philip
Cohen and Professor Dario Alesi of the Center for Protein
Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation in Dundee. These KOLs not only
provide world leading capabilities for evaluating the performance
of Affimer reagents, but also provide vital intelligence as to the
key targets that are, or will be, important commercial
opportunities for the Company.
The Company has also invested in the generation of applications
and technical data supporting the competitive advantages of Affimer
research reagents both in-house and with customers and
collaborators. This has culminated in the publication of
peer-reviewed articles which are important independent validation
of Affimer reagent performance. For example, the
HIF-1<ALPHA>/p300 protein-protein interaction that plays a
key role in tumour metabolism and thus represents a high value
target for anticancer drug-development, has been studied by
researchers using Affimers to identify novel binding regions on the
surface of p300 to inform future drug design and this work was
published during the period(1) .
Avacta Animal Health
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