Avacta Group Regulatory News (AVCT)

28 January 2014

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or the "Group")

Avacta Life Sciences Launches Affimers Web Site

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the global provider of proprietary diagnostic tools, consumables and reagents for human and animal healthcare, is pleased to announce that Avacta Life Sciences has launched its web site to commercialise Affimer reagents.

Affimers are engineered alternatives to antibodies that have been designed to address many of the issues that limit the performance of antibodies; for example, specificity, batch to batch variability, the time taken to generate new reagents and limitations on targets created. Affimers are based on a small protein called stefin A that can be engineered to bind with high specificity and affinity to a wide range of protein targets thereby creating a potentially large menu of affinity reagents. Avacta is focused on the commercialisation of Affimers as reagents for research and Affimer microarrays which could provide a powerful drug and biomarker discovery tool.

The new web site, which was launched yesterday, marks the start of commercialising Affimers as custom affinity reagents in the life sciences market. Custom affinity reagents are to be generated by Avacta that bind to specific target molecules of interest that individual customers provide. In the case of custom antibodies, animals would be inoculated with the target molecule in order that the animals' immune response generates antibodies to the target. This process can take up to ten or twelve months. Affimers are produced by in vitro screening without the use of animals and the process takes weeks rather than months. Once the optimum binding Affimer is identified, future long term supply of that same Affimer is a routine process because each Affimer is DNA sequenced and can subsequently be manufactured to high quality with low variability and in any volume that the customer may require.

Avacta is also working to develop a catalogue of reagents which will be added to the web site later in the year as will the first microarray products when these are available.

The new Avacta Life Sciences web site URL is : www.avactalifesciences.com 

Alastair Smith, Chief Executive of Avacta said: "I am very pleased that we have reached the start of commercialising Affimers. The benefits of speed of generation, batch to batch consistency and security of supply of these reagents give us a competitive advantage in the custom affinity reagents market. I am very excited about the potential opportunity and pleased to say that we have already secured the first paying customers We are also working hard to build a catalogue of Affimers that address a number of opportunities for these alternative affinity reagents and I look forward to the launch of that catalogue later in the year."

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About Avacta Group plc - www.avacta.com

Avacta Group plc is a global provider of innovative technologies, consumables and reagents for the life science markets, from drug discovery to diagnostics. Avacta operates through three divisions:

Avacta joined AIM in August 2006 and is based in Wetherby, England.