Avacta Group Regulatory News (AVCT)

Avacta Group plc

First Optim Sale into the USA Market

Leading biopharmaceutical company takes delivery of first unit in the USA

Avacta Group plc ("Avacta" or the "Company"), which provides innovative, high value proprietary technologies and services to the pharmaceutical and diagnostics markets, announces that it has made its first sale and installation of an Optim system in the USA, the major world market for the product. For competitive reasons, the customer does not wish to be named.

Optim is a sophisticated bench-top laboratory instrument and has been developed to accelerate and reduce the cost of drug development through the very early stage analysis of drug compounds. This early analysis ensures that the best candidate drug compounds for development and optimum processing conditions are identified.

Moreover, in the critical stages of pre-formulation, stability testing and formulation of biopharmaceutical drugs, Optim is capable of delivering vital information ten times faster than any other known approach whilst using sample sizes less than a hundredth of that currently needed. This quantum leap in efficiency and reduction in the amount of precious sample that is used, allows drug developers to gain a much greater insight into their products at an earlier stage of development. This in turn should lead to a significant reduction in failure rate of drug compounds thus reducing the overall costs of bringing new drugs to market. Optim is priced at around £100,000 per instrument and employs a single-use sample holder which it is expected will lead to significant recurring consumables revenues.

Alastair Smith, Chief Executive commented:

"North America represents about 50% of the world market for Optim and this first sale to another of the top ten pharma companies is great news. We have now sold nine Optim units with five installed that are generating recurring revenues. In the last few months we have generated around thirty serious leads in the USA and we have also agreed to put units into two US Universities; Kansas and Colorado, both of which work closely with the biopharmaceutical sector and are highly influential in the US biotech market. We are working to appoint a US distributor shortly and I expect all of this activity to have a very positive impact on Optim sales in 2011."

4 January 2011

Enquiries:

Notes to Editors:

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.