Avacta Group Regulatory News (AVCT)

23 November 2016

Avacta Group plc

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

Avacta demonstrates key performance benefits of Affimer technology for affinity separation

· Avacta to present Affimer performance data at bioProcessUK, 23-24 November.

· Affimer technology shown to offer key performance benefits compared to antibodies and other technologies in this application.

· Affinity separation market is worth $0.5bn and growing at 10% pa.

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and research reagents, is pleased to announce that the Company will present data that highlights the competitive performance of Affimers in affinity separation applications at bioProcessUK on 23-24 November 2016 in Newcastle, UK. Affinity separation is one of three non-therapeutic applications that the Company highlighted in its strategic plan presented earlier in the year.

Affinity separation is used to purify biological molecules from complex mixtures by capturing them using antibodies or other binding agents such as Affimers. The affinity separation market ranges from small, laboratory scale separation systems up to very large, industrial bioprocessing systems capable of handling thousands of litres of a product. The Company believes that this market is worth around $0.5bn in total with growth being driven strongly by the growth of the biopharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. The market is also responding to demand for better performance, new systems to purify emerging product classes, re-usability in some applications and improved economics.

During the past six months the Company has been benchmarking Affimer technology against accepted market performance standards and will present data at bioProcessUK on 23-24 November 2016 which show that Affimer technology is highly competitive in a number of ways:

· Affimer purification systems show excellent stability and can be regenerated for re-use at least one hundred times, if required, because of the compatibility of the Affimer technology with harsh washing conditions.

· Affimer reagents are highly specific to the target and can be generated against targets which are difficult or not possible for antibodies because of the in-vitro selection process used to generate new Affimer reagents. 

· The binding capacity of a prototype Affimer based purification system has been shown to be comparable to established commercial products.

Dr Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Avacta, commented:

"We have previously identified affinity separation as a commercially attractive, non-therapeutic application for the Affimer technology where we could foresee significant competitive advantages over existing technologies. We have since focused our non-therapeutic development efforts on this application, along with lateral flow rapid diagnostics and immunoassays.

I am delighted to report that the detailed marketing data pack for affinity separation that we have generated as planned clearly validates the relative performance benefits of Affimer technology in this application. Indeed, we have been able to produce, in-house, a prototype Affimer separation column that has superior stability characteristics and comparable binding capacity to established commercially available alternatives. We are now in a strong position with credible supporting data to partner the Affimer technology in this market, particularly in the areas of biologics production and small scale sample separation for diagnostics and research."

ENDS

Notes to Editors

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About Affinity Separation

Affinity separation is used to concentrate or purify a particular substance out of a complex mixture. This is generally achieved by flowing the mixture through a tube or column packed with plastic beads, the surfaces of which have been modified with an affinity reagent such as an Affimer molecule or antibody making these beads "sticky" for the substance of interest. The packed column of beads presents a very large surface area for the mixture to flow over and around increasing the likelihood of the substance of interest being captured. Once the mixture has been flowed through the column, the substance of interest that has been captured on the beads is flushed out by selecting wash conditions that will free it from the affinity reagent.

Affinity separation can be applied at laboratory scale in which a substance of interest is purified from millilitres or fractions of millilitres of a mixture, either as part of a production process or as a preparatory step for analytics or diagnostics. It can also be applied at much larger scale in bioprocessing where thousands of litres of a mixture are handled in columns measuring up to metres in diameter. Laboratory scale affinity separation systems are often single use whilst larger systems are regenerated and used many times which requires reasonably harsh washing conditions to clean the product for re-use.

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 $50bn 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 and bleeding disorders as well as partnered development programmes. Avacta is also commercialising non-therapeutic Affimer reagents through licensing to developers of life sciences research tools and diagnostics.