Avacta Group Regulatory News (AVCT)

Avacta Group plc

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

Posting of Circular and Notice of General Meeting

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and reagents, announces that the Circular as referenced in the announcement dated 4 June 2020, will today been sent to shareholders together with a notice of a General Meeting ("GM") which is to be held at the offices of Walker Morris LLP at 33 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL at 10:00 a.m. on 24 June 2020. Copies of the Circular and notice of GM are now available from the Company's website, www.avacta.com.

In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic and current Government advice on public gatherings, shareholders are strongly urged to appoint the Chairman of the Meeting as their proxy as attendance in person is not advised and members and their proxies may be refused entry if circumstances permit or require.

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About Avacta Group plc - https://www.avacta.com

Avacta is developing novel cancer immunotherapies combining its two proprietary platforms - Affimer® biotherapeutics and pre|CISION™ tumour targeted chemotherapy. With this approach, the Company aims to address the lack of a durable response to current immunotherapies experienced by most patients. The Company's therapeutics development activities are based in Cambridge, UK.

The Company benefits from near-term revenues generated from Affimer reagents for diagnostics, bioprocessing and research, through a separate business unit based in Wetherby, UK.

The Affimer® platform is an alternative to antibodies derived from a small human protein. Despite their shortcomings, antibodies currently dominate markets worth in excess of $100bn. Affimer® technology has been designed to address many of these negative performance issues, principally: the time taken, and the reliance on an animal's immune response, to generate new antibodies; poor specificity in many cases; large size and cost. 

Avacta's pre|CISION™ platform, activates chemotherapy only in the tumour, thereby limiting systemic exposure and damage to healthy tissues, and thus improving the overall safety and therapeutic potential of these powerful anti-cancer treatments. 

By combining these two platforms the Company is building a wholly owned pipeline of novel cancer therapies with the aim of creating effective treatments for all cancer patients including those who do not respond to existing immunotherapies. Avacta expects to take its first drug, a pre|CISION™ targeted form of the standard-of-care Doxorubicin, into the clinic later in 2020 or early 2021.

Avacta has established drug development partnerships with pharma and biotech, including with Moderna Therapeutics Inc., a collaboration with LG Chem to develop treatments for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases worth up to $310m, a partnership with ADC Therapeutics to develop Affimer® drug conjugates and a joint venture in South Korea with Daewoong Pharmaceuticals to develop the next generation of stem cell therapies that incorporate Affimer® immuno-modulators. Avacta actively seeks to license its proprietary platforms in a range of therapeutic areas.

The Avacta diagnostics business unit works with partners world-wide to develop Affimers® for evaluation by those third parties with the objective of establishing royalty bearing license deals. The Company is also developing a small in-house pipeline of Affimer®-based diagnostic assays for licensing.

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