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CO, not my area but I think it has a 'proof reading' complex that corrects sequence replication mistakes and so has a lower mutation rate than some viruses.
I am sure the initial screen of the Affimers would have been just to find a pair of specific binders.
There will however, be some binding site of the S1 which are not variable, they have now had quite a bit of time now to select for ones that bind these regions, (it may be the ones they have already do), provided that they can get the specificity then these would be quite durable.

Worth a look through the paper .
Without casting aspersions, it does seem that people going on holiday to Spain in the summer has had quite an impact...

Yep Oke, it's watching evolution in practice.
Interesting thought, if you had a test that missed a mutation, that strain could become more prevalent , you would then drive 'evolution' with your diagnostic .

A second new variant 20A.EU2 with mutation S:S477N would not be detected.
Amino acid changes are important when it comes to using Affimers and mAbs in diagnostics. As was pointed out in the last presentation, the G614D does not affect either of their two Affimer S1 binding sites, it cannot be ruled out that other changes may.
They must by, know which AA's are key for binding of the two they are using and could look at the potential for mutation at these sites. The ability to screen lots of Affimers plus their small size, which gives access to smaller epitopes (cheers PL), should give them an advantage over mAbs for selecting the most suitable.
You would not want to make the tests then find that a new variant does not bind!

I mentioned before, that as a tryptic digest, the BAMS test would not pick up the G614D mutation. There is now a new variant which seems to be growing in prevalence ( 20A.EU1). This variant has at least six sequence differences including A222V of the spike protein.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.25.20219063v1

In the nomenclature used in the presentation (and for Bruker research note) this is position 206 (why could they have not standardised to the published sequence!). The good news is that they can see this peptide although it is a very weak signal. The peptide is also (or can be) glycosylated which make things a bit trickier (and probably why the unglycosylated form in their trace is so small), it is possible to remove these sugar groups before analysis although I would not think they would do this in a assay used for ‘screening’.

Well clearly the rest of the market did not think so.
Surprising as it was pretty much confirming what they said at the time of the results, except that VoH has increased further since then (was just below pre covid, now just above).
Redde taking time to recover had been flagged , so nothing new there.
Perhaps it is the possibility of lockdowns here and in Spain along with the general sell off today?

Has this been tipped somewhere? Seems to be heading up whilst everything else is going down..

Well, a bit more detailed than last years. Looking OK from this. They are comfortable paying a divi but it would have been nice to know net debt.
FT has 6 broker targets ,
1 hold, 2 outperform , 3 buy
target prices 232 low, 306 med and 427 high
No details whether these are all post April though. Upside even with the lowest rating...

The AGM is tomorrow, let's hope that they give a trading update which is a bit more informative than last years....
'is in line with management expectations.'

They should not have a problem with a placing at what is now a 10% discount. I just wish they would give existing shareholders the option of buying in at the discounted rate as well.
SCE was an exemplar of how to do things earlier in the year, as a result they have good support from their PI's which then gets reflected in the share price.

At the moment they seem to have about 1m/per month cash burn. They should have 6-8M left, plus this raise, so they should have no need for any more until they are generating far more revenues (hopefully...)

I thought the placing last year was to cover most of this..

I really thought that we would not get one until after the clearance when the price would have gone up and the dilution would be less for the same fundraise.

From the previous placing.
- £2 million to establish a service laboratory to support pharma services and accelerate clinical adoption;

- £1 million to develop techniques for culturing CTCs for drug testing;

- £2 million to establish a breast cancer remission monitoring study; and

- £11 million to strengthen the balance sheet in preparation for negotiation of potential corporate partnership deals and provide working capital extending the runway significantly beyond the expected timeframe for potential FDA clearance and completion of the ovarian cancer clinical study.

It is more typical to release good news just before an AGM and then do the placing after.....

We know why now.

RD, Good point about biosensors
That they can get to smaller epitopes would not necessarily reduce non specific binding though. It does means that you can have more binding sites per protein and hence potentially more places to bind 'reporters'

If it is the small size which makes them more specific, then it provides another inherent advantage over mAbs that the later will never be able to match.

I have not seen a reason for why they are more specific, is it because of their small size it reduces the sites where you can get non specific binding?
I was thinking about how they could utilise the small size the other day. It may be possible to find three (or more) binding sites on a target protein, this would mean that on ,say a LFT, you could double number of gold particles per protein and potentially double the sensitivity of the assay. No idea how feasible this is in practice but I cannot see why it would not work.

Cheers, it does demonstrate their potential for use in a broad range of diagnostics compared to mAbs .

Clearly a well-planned transfer to a new CEO. Lets hope the new CEO is as good as JN..
The timing is interesting, being before the January trading update. I do not see them leaving the new CEO to deliver bad news on his first update, nor do I think that JN will want to go without a final positive presentation. So, I think that we will see a November update and that it will show things are picking up nicely.
The impact of this year has been quite binary, with reduced discretionary spending on holidays and going out, some have accumulated wealth, whilst for others it as meant a reduction or loss of income.
Both of these play into HAT, strong sales of jewellery and watches has been flagged by rfx and wosg; loans are now being issued again and the reduction in the pledge book should now be reversing. Gold prices are still high and they have recently had a drive to get more traded in. Their online portal has been honed over the past few months which should help this revenue stream.
They clearly will not be able to make up what they lost earlier in the year but I think that they may have bounced back more strongly than the current share price suggests.

DOH85, I have always kept out of the daily moans and groans. Today was the first time I have said that I thought it was taking a long time to develop some of the assays. Am I not allowed an opinion ?
It was mainly in response to finding that having developed the ELISA assay they were not going for regulatory approval on the one assay they have developed in house.