Avacta Group plc (LON: AVCT) is the topic of conversation when Mark Brewer Director of Life Sciences at finnCap joins DirectorsTalk. Mark explains the implications of taking its first Affimer into the clinic, the relevance of the Tufts collaboration, shares his thoughts on the LG Chem licence and talks us through the Avacta business model.
The company’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.