Member Info for Okehurst1

Think we can say Abingdon / BBI/ ODX and Mologic will all be making domestically manufactured antigens LFT tests for the U.K. Government.

It’s down to who is supplying the biotech element? Hoping it’s us but until we get confirmation via an RNS we still have risk, makes sense why we have paused our share price increasing from last week.

If we could just get a BAM’s update with an associated contract, just one, whilst we wait.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/25/covid-vaccine-latest-booster-new-strains-uk-south-african?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1611586408

It does appear people are going to require booster jabs for some of the variants of Covid 19, a revolving door of Flu Jab, multiple vaccine shots throughout each year.

Testing not going away anytime soon by the look of things.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-25/merck-shuts-down-covid-vaccine-program-after-lackluster-data

https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-based-covid-19-passports-to-begin-trials-in-q1

Posted by AP yesterday, slightly overlooked and a good find

If Aptamer Group delivered on the dates below then we can say they may have completed phase 3 validation.
How long does it take to thaw out 200 positive samples and drop onto LFT’s and take a reading ?

Obviously we have no idea where we stand on either phase 2 or 3 at Porton or even if we are even there?

https://atamis-1928.cloudforce.com/sfc/p/#0O000000rwim/a/4J000000kF82/uEGPunkmK_2oWIpPXckT5Gn_mtsEMT5WzvDFPYg2vj8

Thanks for sharing, interesting.

We know phase 3 is really all about evaluating the test on 200 frozen positive samples, assuming most tests that have released results don’t identify ‘negatives’ having Covid

How long to thaw out the 200 samples and drop onto the LFT and evaluate? 36hrs ?

Reckon their phase 3 is complete.

Pl, just wonder if the CE stamp Mologic Antigen test has Aptamer Groups biotech ? It’s in the bag for Avacta if that test is their best shot.

It does appear somewhere along the timeline of last summer the Government shifted its strategy for Antigen tests and to utilise the framework that had been adopted for the U.K. RTC, coupled with PB Consulting managing the process.

Abingdon / BBI / ODX realising there was no test in 2020 from Avacta and at the same being funded by the Government to produce antibody tests - £75M plus contracts - were advised they will secure/ switch production to antigen tests once the sovereign biotech solution had been established.

The Government was under no obligation to warrant the agreements that Avacta signed with Abingdon/BBI and it’s feasible that this slipped and had little value other than a sign of goodwill / partnership.
By not delivering a test for Porton Down early last September Avacta lost their influence to produce the complete LFT Cassete with the Biotech.
Would they have had the experience to deliver 400M LFT’s a month that Big Al quoted and source worldwide supply chains? You have to doubt it would have ever come off, the business just doesn’t have the skill set?

The current prospect however is right up their street, supply the Affimers or at least the license to manufacture with possibly the reagent if they have the best biotech solution?

Not saying members of the RTC may not one day manufacture for Avacta to sell to the public but it’s not really what Avacta do, they may get some manufactured somewhere for retail sale but the big money is selling the IP.

If the Government are prepared to pay £6 a test we can speculate that £3 to £3.50 is set aside for LFT including the film, maybe the buffer brings it to £4 and the biotech takes it to £6.

So it’s not what Big Al indicated early on with his £12 a test but in hindsight it probably works better for the Avacta management team who focus on selling their solution via a license agreement and they target high volume / 2 year time scale

Hi MB

Good debate, we will soon find out who is correct.

PAA00,
For a cautious investor owning U.K. LFT manufactures is a safe bet, ODX and Abingdon have 120M and 150M LFT pro rata annual manufacturing capacity, however they are restricted by the fact they can’t expand without further capital outlay, plus what will they make off the government per test ? Whilst not a total commodity the Government will negotiate that price down.
ODX for example only gross 75 pence per test for their contribution to the RTC antibody test.

Avacta if they win the race could sell their solution to millions a month worldwide and their gross profit off the LFT is almost their net at this point.

Pl, thinking if Aptamers do outperform us then they just licence their tech to whoever to place in their LFT.’s, don’t think there is going to be a market for 2nd place, thinking the biotech winner won’t even provide the film, so at a basic level just the buffer/ reagent l/ man made molecule will be shipped out to the diagnostics engineers or even the formula and they make their own for their own government contracts.

The market will be huge for the best biotech solution, as I say I can’t see the runner up in the race is getting anything of note, it will just be known as an inferior test.

Saying all that, am confident Avacta will be the winner and take the global market, science is on their side but until we know via that RNS there is still risk here.

Personal view based on what we know contracts wise and leaks via social media ,but we have to take the latter with some caution.

Avacta as a biotech business are not part of the U.K. diagnostics manufacturing industry and have no direct input into Government contracts for the LFT cassette and possibly not even the film itself.

The Mologic CE antigen test in its current guise won’t be good enough for MHRA approval in the U.K. so that’s out of contention.

Mologic may make tests for Avacta to be sold privately but without MHRA home use approval it’s a tough gig selling them to business.

It’s all down to Aptamer group vs Avacta Group who gets the U.K. sovereign biotech contract, its high stakes, high reward, probably nothing in it for the loser, it’s all or nothing.

More validation - if correct - that the Mologic test won’t be providing the full LFT with their buffer to the U.K. Government,they will however make them with another separate Government approved biotech solution, we know this as they have been awarded a £3M contract ,but their own CE stamped LFT is for the African market via their GAD connection, will be interesting to see if they use Aptamers or Affirmers in the future ?

Smart bit of business by Mologic to get the £3M contract off the U.K. government then sub contract part of the GAD contract to Omega, they must be making more money off the Government contract than they are making off the GAD charity side, works for Omega as well.

She’s probably wondering why she has 000’s of new followers

Yes good work Chris.
One of her posts
‘So biosure rapid tests missed 4 positive people at my dad's work, but my dad's work's rapid tests they have developed picked up those false negatives. Craaazzzyyy.
#lft #rapidtests’

James Wild: I am coming to the end of my questions. What does your tracing strategy look like over the next six months, particularly with mass testing and looking at increased local authority and public health director involvement? What changes might we see?
Baroness Harding: Two big changes. The first one is making more and more use of what we call extended contact tracing: looking backwards from each positive case to identify where that individual was infected in order to be able to stamp out clusters even faster. That is a technique that is most effective when you are at much lower infection rates and it requires much more collaboration and ownership locally with local health protection teams and local authorities doing that detective work. That is the first thing. We are working with a number of local directors of public health on piloting improved tools to help them do that as we speak.
The other big theme for contact tracing going forward will be genomics. As the virus mutates and new variants are identified—you can see us doing this now—it is about being able to identify contacts very rapidly and sequence whole viral genomes in order to understand where you are
seeing new variants take hold that might have risks for us as a country, and then being able to take very swift action. Those are the two big themes that I would point to for contact tracing going forward.

Mutations... this is the elephant in the room, no wonder they are accelerating Moonshot

How many other countries will follow suit to the U.K.?

All of them, Avacta delivers the best buffer and flogs it for a couple £quid a go to put in their own domestic manufacturer’s LFT cassette.

Q56 of transcript

‘Baroness Harding: I think I said earlier that I view this as an extraordinary national effort where we have built an organisation that, as you have rightly said, is now very large—a £22 billion national service— from scratch in nine months. To do that, we have had to call on talent from across the whole of society, so actually, I am incredibly proud of the NHS colleagues and the public service colleagues, in our national Government, local government, the private sector and the military, all of whom have contributed to building NHS Test and Trace. I am very grateful for the work that all the many thousands of them have put into creating it’

£22B !

We can look back over last 4 weeks and review all the data that is disclosed in the market, yes it’s frustrating for the lack of news on the Covid 19 tests but it’s coming .

Avacta have released three notable RNS’s in that period including xmas and its all positive updates.

Astrae
AVA6000 Pro-doxorubixin
POINT Biopharma

Don’t think it’s in dispute that a Uk sovereign LFT antigen test is being developed, there are numerous contracts that have been awarded by the Government which this Board has already discussed.

In terms of the smart Biotech which makes the test work it
looks like it’s down to Aptamers ( Aptamer group ) and Affimers ( Avacta group)
We believe both are at Porton Down and undergoing clinical review, more than likely only one of the two will be successful in securing the government contract
Based on what we know Avacta should outperform Aptamer Group but we don’t really know 100%

The only other area were there is little clarity is the role of Mologic, they dont look material to the outcome of the Government contract on the biotech side, it’s not in their DNA to the level required but there does appear to be a link with their £3M GAD government contract which suggests a deal has been done for them to set aside part of the production capacity to manufacture U.K. tests?

It may well be that Mologic via GAD took the £3M off the Government and then subcontracted with Omega for them to manufacture their CE Stamped LFT test for Africa back to GAD ,its quite a smart move by them.

So Mologic via the GAD facility are going to produce the sovereign test for a period of time , Omega pick up a bit of business and run both horses, Government and GAD associated contracts, the Mologic GAD LFT won’t have the biotech in but will be cost effective for Africa as its funded by charities, it would be nice gesture if Avacta provided their Biotech -and assuming it’s the best- to Mologic in lieu of them providing LFT’s back to Avacta which they could they could then sell to the general public.

The Avacta Board are proving to be quite skilled putting deals together, this is a small piece of the overall jigsaw but it’s the one piece that’s missing, who will manufacture the first batch of LFT’s to be sold to the public, assuming MHRA clearance.

Good post livelong

Good find pl75, it’s looking firmer by the day.

If we got £2 a pop and we secured 18 months to get the country through to summer 2022, which would include a stockpile for the Government, it’s £2B of cash
Then add overseas Government and big Pharma deals, same concept, Avacta just supply the clever bit.

Plus Medusa handling the sales to the public, if I recall before Xmas the Government said having MHRA approval for home use included Australia, Singapore , Norway, Switzerland and am guessing the EU as well ( but I am not sure on the EU )
Throw that on Amazon and every one in the 1st world with a sore throat / cough / temperature would buy one if priced correctly

The numbers could be off the chart

We just need Al to deliver and he can go back to being Sir Al