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Agree with others that the webinar presented some interesting insights into how the Covid-19 testing is developing. My reading of the reference to saliva testing is that they are looking at whether they can adapt the existing tests that they have to use saliva rather than nasopharyngeal swab samples. So not a fundamentally different test, just a different sample medium.

On the capacity side of things, I was initially disappointed to hear a repeat of the reference to routinely testing 10,000+ per month and growing, as that's what we heard at the AGM, but I think this sort of presentation can only really use information that's already in the public domain, so any update to those numbers (actual or forecast) would presumably have to be released by RNS in the first instance.

One way or another (Covid update, trading update or full year results) we will get some new numbers over the next weeks / months. With everything that’s been going on, they will surely start to show at least a glimpse of the cash machine that’s been built over the last few years, at which point the market will respond accordingly.

We know we’re probably there already Florida, so is this back to you’re previous thoughts about published data and trading algorithms etc.?

Surely a stonking trading update would move things earlier?

Care to elaborate on what that milestone might be Florida?

Hopefully it's just that the Covid testing money is taking longer to count than envisaged.

Agree that the uplift looks extremely modest compared to the opportunity ahead, but for the first time these figures demonstrate how the operational gearing is starting to kick in. As we move past break-even, with the fixed overheads covered, every additional £1m in additional revenue flows through to £633k in PBT.

So if each 10k package of monthly C19 tests is genuinely worth £5m in annual revenues, that means that each 10k tranche of tests is worth something like £3m in PBT, or roughly 0.44p per share (on a 12 month basis with no multiplier). OK, so 0.44p per share isn't very much, but the Govt is looking to increase it's capacity from 250,000 tests per day currently to 500,000 per day by October and on towards millions in the future. That's another 7.5m tests per month from October's uplift alone - 7.5m tests is 750 'packages' of 10,000 tests, so the opportunity is absolutely enormous. If we got just 5% of those additional tests, it would equate to something like 16p per share in additional profits over 12 months.

Lyn is playing it cool, but any significant Govt contract will be completely transformational for short/medium-term revenues and profits - and we already know that Yourgene's test is a gold standard test, so any update on Moonshot is going to be very interesting indeed.

Isn't Lyn planning to launch an all-employee share option scheme shortly? I think it was mentioned in the video? If so, I would have thought they will want to get that sorted before we see any numbers.

This seems like quite a limited market, but I wonder if the industry is thinking of developing a version of this tech that could be retrofitted at key inspection points throughout the whole sewerage network? May not be in time for Covid, but it's clearly looking for a broad spectrum of pathogens, so might be an interesting future development. You wouldn't even need to check any of them until you got a positive result at the treatment works - you just follow the trail upstream until you find the source.

Not sure that's quite right Gunnerbgood - I think they showed that they could raise the dose to 18 times the current level before they hit the same levels of cardiotoxity that they have today with the current therapies, but in practice they wouldn't use that dose because even at that level, there is some damage to the heart and you can only have four or five cycles before you have to stop completely. I think AS said in the Proactive Investors video that they would probably keep the dose at the same level as they use today, because at that level there is little or no cardiotoxicity and therefore you can have as many cycles as are needed to eradicate the tumour. Presumably there may also be an option somewhere in the middle, where you could zap (I think that's the technical term) the tumour harder but still not damage healthy tissue. Either way, it's a lifesaver.

I agree and also think that too much focus is being placed on a vaccine, which will be subject the concerns that have existed with most vaccines in general usage in the population, namely that sooner or later someone finds a link with some condition that appears to have been triggered by having the vaccine.

Compare that 'new' vaccine risk to the same risk with a 'new' therapy that may carry similar risks - the risk equation is completely different. With a vaccine, you're taking healthy people and asking them to take a risk of having a new vaccine (with relatively unknown side-effects) to protect against the risk of getting a virus they may or may not get. With a therapy, you're dealing with people that already have the disease and may be seriously ill with it/deteriorating. That population would be prepared to take significantly more risk with a new therapy because they have far fewer options open to them - it's a completely different choice.

I think there are five pillars to the Covid response:

1. Science / pathology of the virus - this underpins everything else, but has little commercial value in its own right. Avacta is contributing, but no commercial developments.

2. Antigen testing - critical to control the spread of the disease and probably even more critical to sustainably opening up economic activity. Massive commercial opportunity because of the potential to unlock domestic and global economies. Avacta is developing multiple mass-market products in this space.

3. Antibody testing - important to understand the pattern of the spread of infection levels throughout the population, but opinion divided on whether knowledge of whether individuals have had the disease is of any practical help in terms of what that then means in terms of both personal immunity and propensity to infect others. Uncertain commercial opportunity and Avacta isn't playing in this space.

4. Vaccine - seen as the holy grail, but huge obstacles to overcome both in terms of efficacy, scale and speed of production and competition, any of which could scupper an individual company's product. Huge potential to ultimately resolve the pandemic, but major uncertainties and likely to take significant time to build public confidence. Avacta isn't playing in this space.

5. Therapy - seems to be developing at a much slower pace than the other pillars, but good medical practice appears to now be having a significant impact on patient outcomes. It is, however, predicated on using established drugs (e.g. Dexamethasone) to treat the symptoms rather than inhibit the spread of the disease. Commercial potential for a novel therapy would seem to be very high. Avacta is seeking to break completely new ground in this space with a treatment that could have both therapeutic and prophylactic potential.

Looking at it this way, Avacta really does seem to be playing in the three areas that have the most commercial potential.

Welcome aboard Rtest - you've basically asked the question that everyone else has been asking themselves since the litigation was resolved over a year ago. This company has huge potential but none of the future potential is reflected in the share price. At some point, the reported numbers will prove the point and we'll get the re-rate that is so long overdue, but until then, it's a rather pedestrian affair compared to Novacyt. However, the tortoise and the hare may yet prove to be a suitable analogy.

One if things that often seems to get missed in the discussions about the value of Avacta's Covid 19 work is that the Affimer technology is a platform that is not Covid specific. The expansion of resources and capabilities that has been enabled by the recent fundraising, coupled with the experience gained during this pandemic, means that Avacta will be able to respond much faster to a future pandemic.

Assuming that the LFTs work, then Avacta will have a template for responding to any new virus that springs up in the future - everything is in place and they now know all the steps they need to follow to get to market, so could respond much more quickly. Imagine if Avacta's viral diagnostics capabilities had been where they are now when the virus broke out in China last December - we could have had LFTs by February/March and got on top of it before it became a pandemic.

We already know that Avacta is so much more than a Covid play because of its cancer-related platforms (platforms - again), but Covid won't be the last virus that the world has to deal with - Swine Flu, Avian Flu, SARS, MERS and Ebola have all reared their ugly heads in the past ten years or so and many more will do so in the future. This really does have the potential to be a game changer and while the LFT is probably the Covid-related thing that Avacta will make its name with right now, the most exciting thing for me is the potential for an Affimer-based therapy that inhibits the function of the virus. It's going to take a while to develop that, but if it works and the platform can be shown to have wider application for developing neutralising therapies for other pathogens, then that would be huge. And the beauty of it is that all of it stems from the same raw material - just get hold of some samples of the latest virus that the WHO are concerned about, spin up a bunch of new Affimers and then work out which of them are best to use for testing and which can be used as neutralising therapies. If none of the first batch work, make some more until you find one that works.

This for me is why Avacta is head and shoulders above all the other plays. It's like the difference between form and class in sport. Many of the other Covid stocks have form at the moment, but Avacta is in a class of its own.

Been thinking about this paragraph in today's RNS: "The BAMS assay for the spike protein serves as a useful diagnostic tool because this particular viral protein is displayed on the surface of the virus particle and directly involved in engaging host cells (via ACE2 receptor) during infection. For this reason, the same BAMS assay for the spike protein can also be used for drug development efforts to screen compounds that block interaction with host cells through the ACE2 receptor to prevent virus infection."

To me, that's a different therapeutic angle to what was previously suggested, which involved the direct use of the Affimer itself to inhibit the function of the spike protein. I think what this is saying is that the BAMS assay could be used to test the efficacy of a whole range of other drugs (not Affimers) to see whether they are inhibiting the spike protein i.e. take a Covid-19 sample, add a drug to it and then test to see if the drug has inhibited the spike protein. Presumably you would be looking for anything that yielded a negative test result from what you know is a positive sample because the drug has already attached itself to the spike protein, so the Affimer can't.

If that's what this is saying, then it could massively accelerate the development of new therapies, with the starting point being every single drug that already exists (and therefore already approved/understood) in the world today? Not sure how much commercial value you could derive from it (as it's an enabler, not a therapy in its own right) but it might add enormously to the overall scientific effort.

After being a bit uncertain about this first thing, I think it’s a really positive development. Not just because of the market reaction, but because it massively strengthen’s Avacta’s arm in all of theIr commercial negotiations. Beggars can’t be choosers and while Avacta have a unique product, they didn’t have all that much financial muscle - having a huge capital reserve means that we can probably now secure terms that might not otherwise have been possible when dealing with huge multi-nationals.

A bit surprised that people are seeing negatives in this deal.

We can probably be reasonably assured that there were other options on the table, but this was the most commercially attractive deal to the company.

While it’s a bit of an unconventional route to market, there are some obvious advantages for Avacta going down this route:

- Initially, this new company will only have one product to market and sell.

- The balance of power in the relationship rests with Avacta - Medusa19 are nothing without Avacta, but the opposite isn’t true.

- I think the idea of ‘mates rates’ is flawed - mutually beneficial yes, but had Avacta gone with a bigger established pharma distributor, the power balance would have been reversed and might have been more royalty than profit share.

Avacta retains independent control over the direct to consumer distribution, which will be the most profitable channel. Had they gone with a partner involved in other channels, there could have been complexities with conflicts between wholesale and retail channels etc.

I wonder if people would have reacted differently if Avacta had simply said they were going to build a new direct distribution arm? What’s the difference?

Just wanted to highlight that Florida is a regular poster here with a good posting history.

The big unknown is what Avacta will earn for each test - they haven't said that it's a royalty based deal, just that it's a partnership. "Avacta will own the intellectual property relating to the COVID-19 Affimer-reagents and will retain all the commercial rights to future products. Further commercial details have not been disclosed."

How do we know that the deal isn't simply that Avacta bring the IP to the party and Cytiva bring the manufacturing and distribution capacity, with a profit sharing arrangement?

Think I also read recently Bakky that Illumina has a bigger market share than Thermo, so it's remarkable that the growth that's been achieved is with only about a third of the market to go at. In theory our addressable market will more than double once the CE approval comes through for the Illumina version.

I was thinking about the Nasdaq angle too - I seem to recall that LR suggested that the US tended to place much higher valuations on growth biotechs than in the UK - something like 4 times as high, but not sure if that's a constant multiplier or whether it was 4 times what the price was at the time. Think it was said at around 13 to 15p, so that translated into 50 to 60p at the time, but there was a cost (around £500k ish?) that he felt the business couldn't justify at the time. You'd have to wonder if this might happen alongside, or shortly after, the Illumina product launches in the US.

Looking forward to the trading update - this one is pivotal to understand the growth trajectory of the enlarged group following the two recent acquisitions. Add in the new income streams from manufacturing the NCYT components / tests and lab support for NHS testing and it's sure to be an interesting update.

All of the known income streams aside, I wonder if YGEN are exploring whether their genetic profiling expertise (acquired with Elucigene and currently used in oncology) could be used to develop a test that could determine those individuals at highest risk from Covid-19? There's quite a lot of research going on at the moment on that front and if that research identifies genes that pre-dispose people to an acute immune response (which, as I understand it, is what leads otherwise healthy people to develop Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome), then YGEN would presumably be well placed to commercialise a test that could screen people for that genetic trait.