Avacta Group PLC Avacta to Present at Major US Conference
October 10 2017 - 2:00AM
RNS Non-Regulatory
TIDMAVCT
Avacta Group PLC
10 October 2017
10 October 2017
Avacta Group plc
("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")
Avacta to Present Customer Data at Major US Conference
Avacta's Chief Technology Officer will showcase a range of new
applications
including data generated in collaboration with Covance
Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer(R)
biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to announce that the
Group's Chief Technology Officer, Dr Matt Johnson, will be
presenting at the Annual Biomarkers & Precision Medicine
Congress in San Diego, 9th-11th October.
Dr Johnson will be presenting new Affimer applications including
data from a collaboration with Covance, part of LabCorp, one of the
world's largest contract research organisations. These data
demonstrate a high performance Affimer assay to detect and quantify
the breast cancer drug Trastuzumab, showing good sensitivity and
increased assay dynamic range compared to current existing antibody
based assays in a type of assay that is very widely utilised in the
biopharmaceutical industry opening up a significant new commercial
opportunity.
In addition Dr Johnson will be showcasing new Affimers that
improve the detection of clostridium difficile infection, one of
the major hospital borne infections. There are hundreds of
thousands of c. difficile cases annually in the United States alone
resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and the incidence of the
infection is increasing globally. Current antibody tests fall short
in performance which means that a second confirmatory lab test
needs to be performed. The data to be presented by Dr Johnson show
how the use of an Affimer, replacing an antibody in a marketed
diagnostic kit, significantly improves the performance of the test.
This potentially removes the need for the time consuming and
expensive confirmatory test and therefore represents a significant
technical improvement and commercial opportunity.
Laboratory Corporation of America(R) Holdings ("Lab Corp")
(NYSE: LH), an S&P 500 company with a market capitalisation of
$15bn and 50,000 employees in over 60 countries, provides
comprehensive clinical laboratory and end-to-end drug development
services. Covance, which became part of Lab Corp in 2015, worked on
all of the top 50 best-selling drugs available today through
provision of non-clinical, clinical and commercialization services
with annual sales of $2.84bn in 2016.
Dr Alastair Smith, Avacta Group Chief Executive Officer,
commented:
"We are continually generating powerful data showing the
benefits of Affimers and how, in many cases, they outperform the
gold standard antibody technology to support our business
development efforts.
I am particularly delighted to be presenting data from the
collaboration with Covance showing how well Affimer reagents are
working in an important and widespread application. This opens up a
new application area for Avacta to exploit commercially and is yet
another strong validation of the Affimer technology."
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
9321
WG Partners www.wgpartners.co.uk
Nigel Birks / Nigel Barnes
David Wilson / Claes Spang
Zyme Communications (Trade Tel: +44 (0)7787 502
and Regional Media) 947
Katie Odgaard katie.odgaard@zymecommunications.com
Yellow Jersey (Financial Tel: +44 (0)7764 947137
Media and IR) avacta@yellowjerseypr.com
Sarah Hollins
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
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