Member Info for Muck165

Any views on whether we should expect one before the end of Jan?

Schedule 1

This is an earlier PA Consulting contract, which I hadn’t seen.

https://atamis-1928.cloudforce.com/sfc/p/#0O000000rwim/a/4J000000kEmm/1GQnGKcCpxZ0aRSb.hadLQLR.q7iSXlHqFZG6OD1eTc

The “workstream” section in Schedule 2 is interesting, particularly section 2.5, which talks about scaling up antigen LFT manufacturing by “repurposing antibody lateral flow” and “retargeting other lateral flow manufacturing platforms”

All sounds positive to me, and fully in line with the Sovereign test arguments( sorry if already posted)

Sona?. Never seen anything concrete but their message boards are always full of stuff saying Abingdon are manufacturing.

Seem like a major player to me - interesting case study on their site

https://www.fticonsulting-emea.com/insights/case-studies/covid-19-sourcing-logistics-ppe-city-new-york

Here’s the video of Dido Harding talking to the CBI. interesting it for us starts at about 18.11. Fair to say she is very bullish about regular lateral flow testing (twice a week) becoming a regular habit that becomes part of the “routine and rhythm” of the workplace, and expects this to continue throughout the vaccine roll out and thereafter.

https://www.cbi.org.uk/articles/cbi-10am-test-and-trace-what-business-needs-to-know/

Interesting tweet from the journo that broke the “story”, with subsequent debate in the thread. Most seem to think he has very much got the wrong end of the stick it seems!

https://twitter.com/washingtonski/status/1353796533246976000

Thanks WeedyIan - I’m sure you’re right now. At least I’ve discovered the need for me to swot up more in this area! Thanks for replying.

WeedyIan - are you sure? From the July RNS

“Respiratory diseases such as ?COVID-19 can cause serious damage to the lungs as a consequence of over-activation of the patient's immune system, resulting in cytokine release syndrome that can potentially lead to multiple organ failure and death. Stem cell therapies offer a very promising approach to repair the damage to lung tissues in these pulmonary diseases by controlling the immune balance.

AffyXell Therapeutics, the next-generation cell and gene therapy joint venture between Avacta and Daewoong Pharmaceutical, is developing a novel class of mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) treatments that are engineered to also produce Affimer therapies in the patient at the site of action.

The expansion of the agreement between Avacta, Daewoong Pharmaceutical and AffyXell announced today extends the scope of the partnership to include Affimer molecules that target viruses, such as coronaviruses, in order to develop therapies that repair the lung damage caused by COVID-19 whilst also producing neutralising Affimer molecules to prevent the progression of the disease.

AffyXell will engineer mesenchymal stem cells to express SARS-COV-2 neutralising Affimer molecules in order to develop treatments for seriously ill COVID-19 patients, and will also prepare for rapid development of next-generation stem cell therapies for future infectious respiratory disease outbreaks.”

Alistair Smith said

“ AffyXell will address the need over the coming years for advanced stem cell therapies to treat lung damage caused by cytokine release syndrome suffered by COVID-19 patients and, at the same time, help prevent disease progression in these patients through the action of a neutralising Affimer therapy.”

More broadly, one of the key areas of unmet clinical need that AffyXell can address with its next-generation mesenchymal stem cell therapies is acute pulmonary diseases such as COPD and acute respiratory distress syndrome. We, and our partners in South Korea, are very excited by the potential to develop life improving treatments for patients with these serious respiratory diseases as well as COVID-19”

It’s difficult to say Uptomyneck - Myles M did give some views back in July https://twitter.com/MylesMcNulty/status/1288534728409309188.

If I have concerns they’re 1) no mention of AffyXell as the JV Partner, and 2) Affimers still haven’t been trialled in humans As far as I know.

ODX will I am sure be involved in manufacturing a U.K. test. The more interesting thing about the tweets, at least for me, was that they relate to antigen and not antibody testing.

We know AVCT expanded its collaboration with Daewoong July to "develop stem cell treatments incorporating Avacta's neutralising Affimer therapy for the treatment of seriously ill patients with COVID-19"

This was published last week - https://www.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=10205. Their drug DWP710 sounds very interesting from an AVCT perspective.

Looks like DH took part in a CBI Webinar this morning, the video of which will be released later today - https://www.cbi.org.uk/events/cbi-10am-82118/

Here's an early report of it - https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/westminster-news/dido-harding-on-coronavirus-test-trace-7070612

"She also said employers should roll out regular, asymptomatic lateral flow tests – ideally twice a week, every week – as a way to live with coronavirus."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/National-Strategy-for-the-COVID-19-Response-and-Pandemic-Preparedness.pdf

P58-60 most relevant to testing. Interesting he’s promising a 5 YEAR commitment to the onshore manufacturing of tests, and “ promote innovation in testing, including at-home tests and instant tests”.

Hopefully something here for BAMS, and potentially for the LFD if we could licence it a US company.

Just an observation re the M19 RSPT.

When it launched M19 quoted specs of “96 per cent sensitivity, relative specificity of 92 per cent 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.” Using the google archive, you can see they continued to quote these specs until at least 14/11.

On 22/10 M19 announced a major pilot in Madrid. “ The pilot has been endorsed by Madrid’s Vice President Ignacio Aguado, who attended the launch of the trials at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. Once completed, the Vice President has announced his intention to roll out the Medusa 19 RSPT for mass testing widely across the city, including on public transport links.”

On 17/12 Hughes et al announced the £20m investment to ramp up manufacturing.

Again, using the google archive, you can see that at some point between 14/11 and 24/12 the test specs were changed to “ Relative specificity 98% (174/177), relative sensitivity 92% (34/37) and accuracy of 97% (208/214)”

So, I’m guessing that the pilot went ahead giving rise to new test specs, and that the £20m investment was then made in anticipation of a major roll out of it in Madrid. But I’ve seen nothing announcing such a roll out, nor any announcement to explain the change in the promoted test specs. M19 still appear to be trying to get their test accepted in Spain, and on 19/2 posted a video of them promoting it on a regional Spanish TV site.

All in, it seems to me that they’ve either invested the £20m in expectation of a big deal in Spain (perhaps yet to be announced), or they’ve been done over by the Spanish and been left with loads of manufacturing capacity for a test nobody wants.

If my musings have any merit then I hope it’s the latter, leaving AVCT with some lovely manufacturing capacity.

Of course, this all might be a load of old tripe!

GLA for next couple of weeks. Gonna be exciting I think!

Thought I’d post this for those who haven’t seen it, because it sets out the current govt community testing strategy, along with where that strategy is heading, in some detail - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/community-testing-explainer/community-testing-a-guide-for-local-delivery. Thought this bit was interesting;

“ Emerging capabilities.

We are in the process of evaluating lateral flow devices for use at home, and for daily contact testing.
Home use.
Lateral flow devices are currently deployed in supervised settings – that is, trained staff are involved in processing tests using the devices and reading the results. We are close to being able to allow people to process and read the results of these tests themselves. Once the approvals and technology are in place, we will then be able to start to allow people to take tests home from their workplace or school, and ultimately for some people to get tests delivered to home or collected locally (for example, local retail).

Daily contact testing
At present, identified contacts of someone who tests positive for coronavirus are required to self-isolate for 10 days. We know that contacts are themselves at greater risk of developing coronavirus than the general population. Testing contacts daily for 7 days offers the prospect of finding more asymptomatic cases amongst contacts, and of tracing contacts of those contacts. As compliance with self-isolation is variable, particularly among asymptomatic contacts, using daily contact testing as an alternative to self-isolation may also increase compliance and reduce onwards transmission. Daily contact testing is already being evaluated in a number of settings; assuming the evaluations are successful and MHRA approval is obtained we will expand daily contact testing into further institutions.”

Yep - timing was interesting as well given the 15/1 tender deadline, with requirement to have completed futility testing.

Don’t know what (if any) tests out there are using Aptamers, but we can be sure that Aptamer Group have only recently submitted their tests to Porton Down for futility testing - see section 6 in https://atamis-1928.cloudforce.com/sfc/p/#0O000000rwim/a/4J000000kF82/uEGPunkmK_2oWIpPXckT5Gn_mtsEMT5WzvDFPYg2vj8

A merchant.

Just to add to confusion re BAMS, the other thing to remember is this - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assessment-and-procurement-of-coronavirus-covid-19-tests/coronavirus-covid-19-serology-and-viral-detection-testing-uk-procurement-overview, which confirmed that a mass spec test had been validated through a “different route”.