Avacta Group Regulatory News (AVCT)

Avacta Group plc

New Product Launch

Diagnostics instrument for rapid point of care testing

Avacta Group plc ("Avacta" or the "Company"), which provides innovative, high value proprietary technologies and services to the pharmaceutical and diagnostics markets, announces the commercial launch of AX-1 (known as Midas during its development).

AX-1 is rapid point of care immunoassay system capable of delivering a wide range of blood tests to detect disease biomarkers in a GP or vet clinic. The instrument will initially be sold in the UK and European veterinarian market through Avacta Animal Health and distributors, but is equally suitable for human diagnostics. The bench top instrument uses a disposable test cartridge that is pre-loaded with reagents specific to each test, and once the blood sample is loaded the systems carries out a fully automated test.

The AX-1 is designed to beat point of care diagnostic systems already on the market. It incorporates the gold standard for immunoassays, an ELISA test, including full wash steps within the cartridge, and it uses a highly sensitive combination of chemiluminescence readout with photomultiplier detection.

The veterinary diagnostics market is worth at least $1.5bn worldwide and the human point of care testing market is considerably larger at approximately $16bn.

The first test sold with the instrument is an allergy screen for dogs, which is to be used by vets to identify those animals suffering from an allergy that will therefore benefit from a more detailed and more costly allergy test which Avacta Animal Health also provides. The Directors expect first units to be shipped early in the New Year and to see the recurring revenues from the test cartridge sales grow as the installed base for the instrument and the menu of tests grows.

Alastair Smith, Chief Executive commented:

"We believe that AX-1 presents a world leading solution to the fast growing market of point of care testing. Our focus in the near term will be on expanding the menu of tests available to run on the AX-1 for the veterinary market, but there is also a much bigger opportunity for the AX-1 to address by further developing the product to deliver multiplexed testing and diagnostics for the human market.

With momentum also gathering in the sales process for Avacta Group's Optim product, we are now strongly placed to deliver on our plans and I look forward to updating the market again in due course."

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About Avacta

Avacta was spun-out from the University of Leeds in 2004 by its current management team as a biophysics company, with the aim of combining the disciplines of physics and biology to develop innovative technologies and expert technical services to address unmet needs in the biopharmaceutical and healthcare sectors.

Avacta has a core bio-analytical technology development programme addressing the needs of the biopharmaceutical sector to fully characterise their new products at the earliest stage in their development to reduce the risk of late stage failure.

High end analytical instruments and leading edge contract research services are being provided to the biopharmaceutical and healthcare/personal-care materials sectors through the Group's biotech support division, Avacta Analytical. High value solutions for rapid, point of care diagnostics based on these core bio-analytical technologies, with a near term focus on veterinary diagnostics, are being delivered through Avacta Animal Health. Longer term these technologies will be transferred into the human clinical diagnostics market. Avacta joined AIM in August 2006.