Member Info for Monkshood

Hants-
A couple of years ago I had a very good Masters student who developed an assay for 20 proteins. She was relatively inexperienced at lab work. The project was based on quantifying tryptic peptides as surrogate markers for the proteins in question. She selected the peptides in silico then confirmed this in vitro on samples (in practice this is an iterative step). She then designed 3 synthetic proteins concatemers of the selected marker peptides. It needed three as the proteins were at very different abundances.
The DNA for the proteins was synthesised, the proteins expressed and purified from E.coli .Tryptic digests of these were then checked by MS/MS. The next step was to repeat this but make ‘heavy’ (isotopically labelled) versions of the proteins, this is so that they can be added to the assay to provided ‘absolute’ quantification. Calibration curves were generated, and the assay finalised. She then used the method to accurately measure the abundance of the proteins under different conditions, measuring some other parameters as well.
In total she spent just three months in the lab.
Admittedly it was not at commercial scale but it is a lot more complex than what they have had to do and she was inexperienced, so this is why I think it has taken rather too long…..

Oke, who knows? I don't even know what the BAMS 'assay' is. It is an affinity purification step - but beyond that there are different routes/options. Will they use intact proteins or a tryptic digest, what is the sensitivity, do they include standards ?
It has been a long time since they first supplied Adeptrix with the Affimers, but in terms of a test that can be run as a Sars cov2 screen we know nothing.
I really though that a summer time line for release was reasonable as it does not have the complexity of a LFT.

Hants, I would say in my defence that I have spent most of my working life as an analytical chemist and the past 10 years developing MS based protein quant assays.

Oke, but the ELISA test is the one that they have spent the time developing themselves.
You can use affinity capture in 96 well plates (or in tips) and follow this up with analysis by MS, it can even be fully automated.
I just think that it has taken too long to go from having selective affimers to monetising a product.

PL75, I agree, they could have had affinity capture in a microtiter plate (no sandwich) almost straight away. They have the affimers to do this for both the S1 protein and the nucleocapsid proteins.
Another example is that it is possible to do affinity capture in pipette tips.
Lots of companies have been busy raising their own mAbs for tests and other applications, Roche clearly see potential with their antigen assay (the advantage of theirs over Avacta's is with the detection system).
I feel that the diagnostics has been treated a bit of a side-line to the 'more exciting' oncology work and they have rather missed out on capitalising on some of their early advantage.

Glycosylation half answered, details of BAMS test not.
I also note that they are not going to seek regulatory approval the ELISA. I am surprised by this. One of the points made was how quickly they had selected the specific Affimers (4 weeks). This is far quicker then would be possible with mAbs or pAbs and easier to scale but then they lost this advantage by then taking so long to develop the assays. Now they have an ELISA assay they are not really going to maximise the revenues from it. They would have perhaps been better licencing to others ?

Now @ 3,007.4p NAV per share
Last months, 4.5% failed to move the share price, with this months 5.7% it gives a 283p increase in NAV ( 9.7%) from the August update when the share price was marginally higher.
Lets hope that the discount will now start to close

I was not going to buy anymore but could not resist todays fall. At this rate you may get your 200 yet Jolly...

I agree with FK on this one, it has not only risen today it was rising strongly into the results.
I have been reducing over the past week and then took a big top slice today. I think it is a good long term hold but seems to have go a bit ahead of its self this week....
I will top up again in the months to come.

Whilst RTO has always been a reasonable covid hedge the rational for holding it has increased as it has developed its disinfectant service since earlier this year. For the first three quarters -
Disinfection, Q1 -0, Q2 £49M, Q3 £75M.
It is hard to believe that these revenues will not increase further with increasing incidents in nearly all of its geographies.
This income should continue until covid starts to decline, but then their HORECA and Ambius sectors will be growing again to help replace this income stream. Pest control will jog along nicely as always.

Looking good-
'Board is pleased to report that it expects revenue and free cash flow for the year to 31 December 2020 to be in line with current consensus market forecasts, which are shown at the foot of this announcement1. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be approximately 15% ahead of current consensus market forecasts (revenue: £25.8m; adjusted EBITDA £6.9m; free cash flow: £5.2m.)'
Lots of potential to continue the growth in US and new territories.

And they look very good too..... group revenue up by 9.8%
I took a punt and picked up some more yesterday, this should start back on its usual upwards trajectory from now.

SDL indicated that things were picking up in their outlook at their half year results. I was hoping that this would have also been reflected in the final quarter of RWS, but it seems not. From the fall today I guess I am not the only one expecting a bit more.
I am holding this for the long term, the revenues in auto and aero will return post covid and the combined company will be a significant world player in the translation arena with lots of scope for both synergies and growth.

The Mali political situation has not had an impact. (beyond a lack of clarity about a $58M vat bill)
The issue is operational as is stated in the rns ' a new CEO to take Resolute forward, to deliver improvement in operational outcomes'

Firstly, JW was one of the most responsive CEO's to emailed questions, so I will accredit him with that.
But I agree, things have not been good at rsg under his tenure of late. An example is where they spent lots on automation, then during the previous quarter, resorted to drivers and found that they were getting better productivity.... Cracks in the roaster, pit wall collapses and strikes in the past year could arguably have been avoided with better management.
There was nothing in the Tabakoroni update to tempt me back in. I struggle to believe the proposed AISC, when you look at the sulphide circuit results for Syama for the last quarter the ASIC was $1333, given the extra haulage it is hard to see this being reduced by $350.

Ahead of the AGM, the Company is pleased to confirm a return to strong sales in the three months ended 30 September 2020 (Q1), in line with the outlook released at the time of the Final Results. Sales in Q1 are ahead of the strong comparator Q1 of the prior year.

EPR = electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometer-
No.... you need to be looking for Maldi ToF's - such as Bruker microflex.

They also said that it was to supplement PCR in hospitals.
Surely when they submitted BAMS to Condor they must have proposed a method? There is quite a difference between assays based on +/- tryptic digests, reduction, deglycosylation etc .
I wonder if Adeptrix just got fed up with waiting and wanted to get market position and some revenues in from research labs etc as CO and Ophidian say..

Doze, I have a fair idea of what is involved. Most research Uni's will have at least one of these (or similar MS's) with the people to run them. Some such as Oxford, Cambridge are Imperial are also involved in testing (then there is the rest of the world!)
I just would have expected some sort of bench marking from the companies before releasing the product.

Having been involved in ring trials (where different companies run the same samples/assay as a form of QC) , I am aware how the quality of the results can vary between different sites running the same assay.
Usually companies want to show their initial tests in the best light without risking this to third parties.

What I find odd is that a third party could now purchase the tests, run trail assays (on patient samples) and then publish the results.
I would have thought that Avacta/Adeptix would want more control of the data flow at this stage rather than leaving it to others.