Member Info for leewill39

Has Gerry Brandon taken over the Omega Twitter account?

Not a fan of the Twitter approach personally.

About time more starting saying that, we are extremely lucky to have Big Al steering the ship.

Avacta only acquired the Affimer IP in 2012 and it was just patents, there were no Affimers. So it has taken some time to build the infrastructure and improve the technology further - the latest affimers are not the original flavour. We are now seeing the commercialization of the affimers taking place and I suspect it will accelerate a lot quicker after the exposure the affimer platform has received lately.

Just look at what Al has achieved
1. Noticed the potential of the Affimers and acquired the IP.
2. Completely refocussed the company onto the Affimers and sold off the old parts of the business.
3. Brought Matt Johnson if from Abcam to build the platform
4. Convinced top guys like Eliot Forster and Mike Owen to join the board of directors
5. Done a transformational deal with Bach Biosciences to bring in the Precision platform and the TMAC concept - potentially the holy grail of cancer treatments.
6. Convinced Matt Vincent, David Wilson and Neil Bell to join the company, all very well connected and respected industry veterans.
7. Big licencing deals being done across the business with a very noticeable acceleration over the past 18 months.
8. Convinced Ruane to invest 10 million - they do not part with cash with a crazy amount of due diligence.

I could go on and of course Big Al has a great team around him but the companies success is in a big part down to this superb businessman leading our company. The employees obviously enjoy working under him as many of the key staff have been with the business for years which is not common in biotech.

It takes time to disrupt established markets like Antibodies but I believe we are seeing the early signs of it, certainly LG, Daewoong and Mologic seem to think so. GLA

The biorecognition element can be an antibody or fragment but increasingly are Affimers, (synthetic binding proteins developed by the McPherson & Tomlinson groups at Leeds)

https://biologicalsciences.leeds.ac.uk/school-biomedical-sciences/staff/115/professor-paul-millner

Professor Paul Millner
Areas of expertise: electrochemical biosensors: nanobiosensors; conjugation of biomolecules; targeted nanoparticles for imaging and drug delivery; PDI for water sterilisation.

We have developed a new reagentless immunosensor platform which allows highly sensitive single step measurement of a wide range of substances, based on affinity immobilisation of tagged antibodies to self assembled mixed monolayers (Fig. 1) or to electropolymerised polyaniline layers (EC Project ELISHA - see www.immunosensors.com). Immunosensors for antibiotics, herbicides, cardiac, cancer and neurodegenerative disease markers have been developed, viruses and bacteria. Sensors for host biomarkers of bacterail and viral infection are are also being developed. The biorecognition element can be an antibody or fragment but increasingly are Affimers, (synthetic binding proteins developed by the McPherson & Tomlinson groups at Leeds). In particular, we are interested in the nanoscale structure of the sensor surface and how this influences the impedance signals observed.

Nanoparticle and microparticles:
Work is ongoing to develop nanoparticles of various compositions as enzyme for applications in biosensing, bioimaging and targeted drug delivery. Biosilicate nanoparticles of defined dimensions and biosilicate surface coating have been produced which can entrap and/or stabilise commercially interesting enzymes (EC Project SANTS - www.sants-nanosilicates.com). More recently, we have shown that antibody or Affimer functionalised nanoparticles are able to locate to cancer tissue in vivo and we are currently colalborating with Dr Arwen Tyler (Food Science) to develop Affimer targeted lipidic nanopartciles capable of delivering hydrophobic anticancer agents directly to cancer tissue. Finally a novel nanobiosensor platform which uses lanathanide nanocomposite up conversion nanoparticles (UCNP) is being optimised; replacement of the complete ELISA protocol with a single addition is possible.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/toni-hoffmann_affimer-based-europium-chelates-allow-sensitive-activity-6765379171813261312-XuN9/

Toni Hoffmann
Senior Scientist R&D, Avacta Life Sciences
A snippet from the abstract:
"Here, we report a platform for biosensing based on chelated Eu3+ against a range of proteins including biomarkers of cardiac injury (human myoglobin), stroke (glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)), inflammation (C-reactive protein (CRP)) and colorectal cancer (carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA)). The Eu3+ ions are chelated by modified synthetic binding proteins (Affimers), which offer an alternative targeting strategy to existing antibodies."
https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/3/831/htm

Some like to call me Poirot on this board. Quite frankly Inspector Gadjet could deduce from the info this week that it will our test that the Government will use:)

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/neilbell_engineered-affinity-proteins-activity-6765223700653461504-9t4M

I’m currently managing a search for a Senior Programme Lead to join Neil Bell's Therapeutics team at Avacta. We're looking for a contract or permanent ambitious project leader to work at the forefront of Avacta's development strategy and drive the development of their #oncology portfolio from pre-clinical stage through to the clinic.

For a confidential discussion, please drop me a line to discuss this role and other potential #opportunities to join this UK #biotech at an exciting stage of growth.

It would seem that Medusa19 have ISO 13485 accreditation.....

"Following 5 months hard work by all at Medusa 19, we have today received our ISO 13485:2016 and cGMP Good Manufacturing Practice Accreditation from URS (United Registrar of Systems Ltd). Well done to all involved!"

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andy-white-6ab4a75_following-5-months-hard-work-by-all-at-medusa-activity-6762815188115722240-JCCj/

Medusa19 links to Madrid......

Importantly, since this test indicates an immune response to current or recent infection, it can therefore alert users if they should immediately self-isolate to stop the spread of the disease. Independent clinical trials were conducted in collaboration with Hospital Carlos III/Institute Carlos III – Hospital La PAZ, Madrid, on 254 participants. In a cohort of patients with no specific symptoms, the trial demonstrated relative sensitivity of 96 per cent (ability to detect true positives), relative specificity of 92 per cent (ability to detect true negatives) and 94 per cent accuracy in patients with the absence of specific symptoms and who did not know they had an active SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The issue is an continues to be that Avacta are wrongly being labelled as just another covid stock. We are clearly running behind Surescreen and others in getting our test launched, hence are share price hasn't moved like others......at the moment!!

However, I certainly do not deduce from that RNS that Avacta are now only targeting low income countries, quite the opposite actually its in addition to the UK market. Avacta have 3 of the big 4 officially lined up as manufacturers and we know ODX are working on it also. Mologic didn't have to work with us, clearly they have developed a very good test themselves, its just that its not outstanding like ours will most likely be. Mologic are clearly excited to be working with us based on their media channels yesterday as they know the affimers are gold standard. Just watch what comes out of this partnership over the next few years, I think its going to blow everybody away. The big US players are going to be taking a very keen interest in developments...…and Mr Gates of course:)

My only gripe with Avacta right now is the poor job it is doing in getting more of the focus onto its therapeutic platforms. We've had some really good announcements about Point and Affyxell but Al has remained quiet. I know he is going to reveal all at the trading update but I think they have missed a trick slightly during the last few weeks. Surely we must hear about the LG extension before then and the further upfront payment??

Sage, I'm sure Gerry Brandon confirmed that the Affimer binders are unaffected by the mutations.

Sorry got to dash off to work but I'm sure someone can find his post on lse, twitter etc

I'm sure the smart money will realise the importance of the tie up with Mologic and GAD.

Also, we had almost 600k shares hitting the market yesterday from the Bach options.

Working on it Timster :)

Seriously, does anyone really think they haven’t tested this already with patient samples?

I cant believe that you can sign up all these manufacturers and partners without saying to them the test works outside the lab.

Absolutely stunning performance in the lab!!!!

Affimer horsepower at work:)

CEO at Medicines Discovery Catapult ; Independent chair UK COVID-19 Rapid Test Consortium ; Non-exec chairman at Exploristics Ltd and NorthWest EHealth Ltd
1m
Congratulations Avacta and Mologic for teaming up to get your products to people who need them. hashtag#consortium hashtag#breakthechain

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/avacta-life-sciences_commercial-partnership-with-mologic-avacta-activity-6764438267946401792-MImo/

Look who just liked Avacta's post...…..Chris Molloy

Absolutely brilliant news this morning

Mologic are a superb diagnostics company and very well connected, just a perfect partner for Avacta.

The delays are so frustrating but we are well and truly on the finishing straight now. GLA

Noticed Chris Molloy chair of UK COVID-19 Rapid Test Consortium like this post by BBI on LinkedIn......

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lisa-mansell-aab8a118_conjugation-goldconjugates-assaydevelopment-activity-6762833705049370625-5cTB/

Every reliable assay depends on high quality, reproducible gold conjugates.

Our scientists work in partnership with customers to bring all the vital ingredients together and provide sensitive, stable, reproducible conjugates time after time.

Don't just take our word for it....

"The gold and conjugation processes at BBI are unrivalled – we found that BBI was the best that we could work with." CEO James Lousararian, Verax Biomedical

Not just more quickly to produce, they are much cheaper and have better shelf life.

Even if performance is on a par with antibodies they will take the market on these factors imo.

Joanne Soundy
Commercial Marketing Manager, Diagnostics
With over 15 years’ experience, Joanne has a strong marketing and commercial background across the pharmaceutical, biotech and veterinary industry. Since graduating from the University of York with a BSc (Hons) in Psychology, she has developed a wealth of product and service marketing experience. Joanne joined Avacta in 2011 and has worked in both the Animal Health and Analytical division, before taking on this role to manage all aspects of product marketing within the Diagnostics division of Avacta Life Sciences.

Another move that speaks volumes to me!!