Avacta Group Regulatory News (AVCT)

17 December 2018

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")

Avacta London Science Day

Avacta to hold a London Science Day with plenary presentation by

Josep Tabernero, President of ESMO and Head of the VHIO, Barcelona

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to announce that it will host a Science Day, in London, on the morning of 14 February 2019, focusing on the rapidly changing nature of oncology treatment being brought about by immunotherapies and the role that the Affimer therapeutic platform is playing in this shift in the therapeutic paradigm.

The Group is delighted to announce that Dr Josep Tabernero, President of the European Society for Medical Oncology and Head of the Val d'Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, will give the plenary presentation reviewing the progress that has been made in cancer immunotherapies and the challenges that still remain.

Professor Bill Bachovchin, Professor of Molecular and Chemical Biology at Tufts University School of Medicine will discuss the potential for the revolutionary, immuno-oncology active, drug conjugate platform being developed in collaboration between Avacta and Tufts.

The Group's recently appointed Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jose Saro, will discuss how the benefits of immunotherapies can be extended to more patients, and the particular role that the Affimer platform is playing in this cancer treatment revolution will be reviewed by the Group's Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Amrik Basran and Chief Executive Officer, Dr Alastair Smith.

Attendance at the event is by invitation only.

All enquiries should be directed to scienceday@avacta.com. 

For further information from Avacta Group plc, please contact:

About Avacta Group plc (www.avacta.com)

Avacta's principal focus is on its proprietary Affimer® technology which is a novel engineered alternative to antibodies that has wide application in Life Sciences for diagnostics, therapeutics and general research and development.

Antibodies dominate markets worth in excess of $100bn despite their shortcomings. Affimer® technology has been designed to address many of these negative performance issues, principally; the time taken to generate new antibodies, the reliance on an animal's immune response, poor specificity in many cases, and batch to batch variability. Affimer® technology is based on a small protein that can be quickly generated to bind with high specificity and affinity to a wide range of protein targets.

Avacta has a pre-clinical biotech development programme with an in-house focus on immuno-oncology as well as partnered development programmes. Avacta is commercialising non-therapeutic Affimer® reagents through licensing to developers of life sciences research tools and diagnostics.

Josep Tabernero

Josep Tabernero holds MD and PhD degrees from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. He is currently Head of the Medical Oncology Department at the Vall d'Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus, Director of the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), and leads the Research Innovation of Catalonian Cancer Centers Network.

He also directs VHIO´s Gastrointestinal and Endocrine Tumors Group, the Research Unit for Molecular Therapy of Cancer (UITM) - "la Caixa", and is Principal Investigator of several Phase I pharmacodynamic studies and translational projects with molecular targeted therapies, with particular emphasis on EGFR-family inhibitors and IGFR-PI3K-Akt-mTOR pathway inhibitors, as well as phase II and III studies with novel chemotherapeutics.

Based on the idea that each tumor has an independent genetic identity, his group aims at potentiating molecular therapies targeting specific oncoproteins and accelerating more effective personalized cancer medicines for patients displaying genetic lesions or pathway disregulation. One of his team´s main objectives is to establish novel predictive markers of response to anti-cancer therapies and identify markers of primary resistance (de novo) and secondary treatment.

At preclinical level, in collaboration with VHIO´s cancer researchers and physician-scientists, he develops new xenograft models with explant tumors from patients ("xenopatients") in mice in order to mimic the patient's disease and study tumor development in optimal research models. He also leads research into the study of circulating biomarkers (detection and genotyping of circulating free DNA), and is dedicated to advancing the immuno-oncology field through a large portfolio of trials with some of the most promising targets in immune checkpoints and cytokines. By paring immune therapeutics with oncogenomics, his team seeks to render anti-cancer therapies more precise.

Dr. Tabernero serves on the Editorial Boards of various top tier journals including Annals of Oncology, ESMO Open, Cancer Discovery and Clinical Cancer Research. He has (co) authored approximately 350 peer-reviewed papers.

He is currently ESMO President (2018 - 2019) of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and an Executive Board Member. He is also member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and has been appointed as member of several Educational and Scientific Committees of ESMO, ECCO, ASCO, AACR, AACR/NCI/EORTC, ASCO Gastrointestinal, and WCGIC meetings.

Bill Bachovchin

Dr. Bachovchin is a Professor of Biochemistry at Tufts University School of Medicine, where he has served as a faculty member for more than 28 years. Dr. Bachovchin is a world leader in the area of boronic acid chemistry and enzyme biochemistry. Dr. Bachovchin's work has led to the discovery and design of several candidate drugs. He has Co-Founded several biotech companies including Arisaph Pharmaceuticals, Point Therapeutics Inc and Bach Biosciences

Dr. Bachovchin is the inventor on 46 issued US patents, including reach-through patents covering the field of DPP-IV inhibitors for treating diabetes, a $10B market. This patent has been licensed by Merck, Novartis, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Boehringer Ingelheim. In addition three drugs first designed, synthesized and characterized in Dr. Bachovchin's laboratory at Tufts University School of Medicine have been advanced into human clinical trials.

Dr. Bachovchin completed his postdoctoral work with J.D. Roberts at California Institute of Technology and at Harvard Medical School. Prior to his Postdoctoral Work, Dr. Bachovchin received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from California Institute of Technology and his B.S. from Wake Forest University.