Avacta Group (LON: AVCT) CEO Alastair Smith joins DirectorsTalk to discuss interim results for the period ended 31st Jan 2019. Alastair talks us through the LG Chem deal, shares his thoughts on the possibility of its collaboration partner Moderna getting an affirmer drug to clinic first, the progress Avacta are making, why a collaboration with Tufts is center in its strategy and expands on a growing pipeline of revenue generating opportunities.
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 $100bn 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 Group plc has a pre-clinical biotech development programme with an in-house focus on immuno-oncology as well as partnered development programmes. Avacta is commercialising non-therapeutic Affimer® reagents through licensing to developers of life sciences research tools and diagnostics.