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LONDON (Alliance News) - Life sciences company Avacta Group PLC Friday said its pipeline of custom Affimer sales is growing strongly, and it has signed a number of commercial partnership deals and is in talks about further strategic alliances with both distribution and product development partners.
In a statement, Avacta, a healthcare diagnostics business, said that it has partnered with Norwegian biotechnology firm D'Liver AS to develop Affimers with therapeutic applications.
"Details of the technical programme and commercial terms are confidential, but the group is entitled to share in future revenues arising from commercialisation of the Affimers that are developed by D'Liver, or future partners, via a royalty model," the company said in a statement.
The company said it was recently granted a patent in the US which covers improvements to the original Affimer protein scaffold, while a patent application is also close to being granted in Europe and is being considered for further grant in the US.
Avacta spent last year ramping up for the release of its catalogue of Affimers, an engineered alternative to antibodies derived from an affinity reagent platform technology it acquired in 2012. It has established a new business, Avacta Life Sciences, to commercialise these Affimers.
The group said the sales pipeline of enquiries for its custom Affimers has grown rapidly, and order intake of custom Affimer services to date is around GBP0.1 million.
The online Affimer catalogue was launched back in September with only 40 line items, but has since been extended to 80 line items. Avacta said it now expects this to exceed the group's internal target of 100 line items by the end of the financial year.
"The number of line items on the online Affimer catalogue, which is expected to generate high margin recurring revenues in the longer term when the catalogue reaches a critical mass, is being built more quickly than originally envisaged," said Chief Executive Alastair Smith in a statement.
Avacta's Animal Health business currently focuses on canine allergy, although the group said it expects further growth through newly developed diagnostic tests delivered as laboratory services or sold as diagnostic testing kits to third-party laboratories.
The group is currently targeting a partnership with a "significant" US veterinary testing services supplier for the longer term, it said.
"Avacta Animal Health is launching its first major test outside of allergy in the US market on the back of encouraging take up of the canine lymphoma test in the UK market. I expect to see near term growth in this part of the group driven by this, and other, new diagnostic test kits and services," said Smith.
Avacta's Analytical division terminated exclusivity in a distribution deal for the key US market with Pall/ForteBio in 2014, which will come into effect at the beginning of February. The company said Avacta Analytical will then sell its Optim analytical instrument directly in the US market, as it sees more potential through direct selling than than through a distributor.
"It will take a little while to build our direct sales capability for Optim in the key US market, but it is important to establish that capability in order to drive the sales growth that we expect for this product. Even with a small team we have seen better sales in Europe through a direct route than with distributors and the very early indications are that this will be the same in the US in due course," Smith added.
The company said it will release its half-year results on April 28.
Avacta shares were down 0.3% at 0.728 pence Friday morning.
By Rowena Harris-Doughty; rowenaharrisdoughty@alliancenews.com; @rharrisdoughty
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