Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Much better. They actually have a published pipeline. The Affibody pitch is all but identical to the Affimer one. Interesting though that all their collaborations bar 1 are with second tier companies. BP seems to have cooled off on AB mimetic technology, Sanofi have got practically nothing for their $4.3 bn Ablynx purchase.
It is not just about press razzmataz. It is about a co-ordinated and coherent communications strategy, that tells a compelling and consistent story. (See I have just invented the 4 C's of communications) If you can't see the need for that then just give up.
What you might not know is that Sue Charles, the person that ran the PR, interviewed on the documentary, also worked on behalf of Ablynx, of Sanofi $4.6bn fame. Be nice if Avacta hired her.
The underlying tech for Affimers is really good, I'm sure that they would do all that they promise. Without a compelling use case, good enough for someone to step up and switch from an antibody approach, they will stay on the shelf. The fact that they are a closed proprietary system does not help getting them kick started. It is not good enough being a bit better than antibodies, they need a unique benefit that has obvious value. Avacta have yet to identify that niche.
Ironically, if they were 'open source', enencumbered by patent protected IP, they may have made more concrete commercial progress. Why would someone move from an open platform like antibodies, to a closed one without a really strong compelling case ? There are lots of good things to say about Affimers, but that 'killer app' has yet to be found. Avacta need to step it up, hopefully some imminent value creation on the pre|CISION side might help.
It was, and it didn't work, so they are trying again with a more business focused pitch. You think they should just give up ? Sooner or later they will get it on the nail and they will bite, this has got $billions written all over it.
I think the problem with Affimers is that the benefits over and above monocolonal antibodies are insufficient for anyone to take the risk of being first. They need to find a compelling niche where they exhibit clear therapeutic advantages, not just development process ones. It has been a slog, and I'm not surprised that 95% of their effort is currently going into prodrugs.
Call me old fashioned, but the content of any poster is quite an important contributor to its impact as well.
Not all trials are the same. First data on a new compound is not the same as confirmatory data on a delivery platform. Sorry to break this to you DS.
They are all here https://patents.justia.com/inventor/william-w-bachovchin
It is a forest I an unwilling to spend the next few weeks digging through.
However, when Point wanted to use the substrate they had to licence it and pay Avacta a sub-licence independent of what it was attached to.