Avacta Group Share News (AVCT)

(Sharecast News) - Avacta Therapeutics provided a second-quarter business update on Wednesday, reporting continued progress in its oncology pipeline and strengthening of its leadership team as it advanced its 'preCISION' drug development strategy.

The AIMt-raded company said its lead programme, 'FAP-Dox', or AVA6000, a preCISION-enabled form of doxorubicin, continued to progress through phase 1b dose expansion cohorts with ongoing patient enrollment.

It said encouraging early efficacy signals had been observed, including a robust partial response in a salivary gland cancer patient showing nearly a 50% reduction in tumour diameters.

Initial data from the cohort were expected later in 2025, with results from the triple negative breast cancer cohort anticipated in the first half of 2026.

Avacta's second programme, 'FAP-EXd', or AVA6103, was moving through investigational new drug (IND)-enabling studies, with a phase one trial planned to start in early 2026.

The company said the programme reflected its broader efforts to advance a pipeline of peptide drug conjugates aimed at improving drug delivery and patient outcomes.

"The company is focused on advancing our promising peptide drug conjugate pipeline with our innovative preCISION technology," said chief executive Dr Christina Coughlin.

"We are making strong progress with the clinical development of FAP-Dox, with patient enrollment ongoing.

"These advances in preCISION will continue to drive value in the company for shareholders."

Avacta also highlighted positive data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in April, where the company reported that median progression-free survival in the salivary gland cancer cohort had not yet been reached after 5.9 months of follow-up, nearly double that of published benchmarks.

At the same time, Avacta said it had strengthened its leadership, appointing David Liebowitz as chief medical officer and Yulii Bogatyrenko as a business development consultant.

Richard Hughes and David Bryant had meanwhile joined the board of directors, while Darlene Deptula-Hicks had stepped down.

The firm said it had also expanded its broker coverage, appointing Zeus Capital as joint broker alongside Peel Hunt and Panmure Liberum.

Avacta said it was continuing to engage with potential partners and investors as it worked to extend its cash runway and further develop its preCISION platform.

At 1057 BST, shares in Avacta Group were down 2.62% at 29.7p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.