Avacta Group Regulatory News (AVCT)

01 November 2016

Avacta Group plc

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

Avacta to present positive results from first Affimer pre-clinical in-vivo studies at major international conference

Affimer therapeutic platform significantly de-risked by positive outcome of first animal studies

· Affimer PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor shown to reduce tumour growth rate in mouse model

· Analysis shows that Affimer treatment increases immune cell population in the tumour mass

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and research reagents, announces that it will present detailed data from the first pre-clinical in-vivo studies of its therapeutic Affimer platform at PEGS Europe (the Protein and Antibody Engineering Summit) in Lisbon on 1 November 2016.

The results of the two recently announced in-vivo pre-clinical studies, which have now been augmented by further data, demonstrate that Affimer molecules possess key properties required for a drug in terms of efficacy, serum half-life and tolerability, and meaningfully de-risk the development of the technology as a therapeutic platform.

The first, a pharmacokinetics study, demonstrated that Affimer molecules can be produced in formats that remain in the blood stream long enough to have a therapeutic effect (i.e. have good "in-vivo serum half-lives") and that they are well tolerated (no adverse effects observed) at the clinically relevant doses used in the study.

The second, an efficacy study, shows that the Affimer molecule which blocks the immune-checkpoint PD-L1 in the mouse has a therapeutic effect and produces a statistically significant reduction in tumour growth.

Subsequent analysis of tumour samples has shown that the Affimer treatment causes an increase in the population of immune system T-cells within the tumour mass which is the objective of an effective PD-L1 blockade.

The title, timing and location of the presentation is as follows:

Alastair Smith, Avacta Group Chief Executive commented: 

"These results which the Company will present in full for the first time at PEGS, the largest protein and antibody engineering conference in Europe, demonstrate that Affimer molecules possess the right properties to be used as therapeutics. This is the first time that we have undertaken such studies in animal models and it is a hugely important milestone in the development and de-risking of the technology as a therapeutic platform.

We are further encouraged by the additional data showing the Affimer PD-L1 blockade also caused in increase in immune cell population in the tumour mass further demonstrating the therapeutic effect of the Affimer treatment.

The Company has made significant progress in the past year, which has only served to strengthen our belief and confidence in the Affimer technology's potential across therapeutic and non-therapeutic applications."

ENDS

Notes to Editors

This work was partly supported by an Innovate UK grant funding.

About PD-L1

PD-L1 (Programmed Death-Ligand 1) is part of the 'immune checkpoint' (ICs) target family. The normal function of ICs is to help to regulate the immune system and to prevent its over-activation towards healthy cells. Tumour cells often can take advantage of this system to "switch-off" and evade the immune system. By specifically targeting certain proteins involved with these pathways, it is possible to reactivate the patients' own immune system and so destroy the cancer cell.

About the Syngeneic Tumour Model

A syngeneic tumour model uses tumour tissues derived from the same strain of mouse as that being used to run the disease model. In this case, cancerous mouse cells (CT26 cell line derived from BALB/c mice) were implanted into healthy BALB/c mice to create the cancer model. This allows the pre-clinical efficacy evaluation of cancer immunotherapeutic leads, including immune checkpoint inhibitors and cancer vaccines, to be evaluated.

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 $75bn 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 targets to enable diagnostics, research assays and therapeutics.

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