Avacta Group PLC Avacta to present at PEGS Europe

TIDMAVCT

Avacta Group PLC

13 November 2017

13 November 2017

Avacta Group plc

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

Avacta's Chief Scientific Officer to Present Therapeutics Update at PEGS Europe

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer(R) biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to announce that its Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Amrik Basran, will be presenting an update on the Affimer therapeutics programmes at the Protein and Antibody Engineering Summit, 13-17 November 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dr Basran will present recent progress in the Affimer therapeutic programmes and will focus on PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitors and half life extension methods.

Dr Basran will discuss new data concerning a range of Affimer proteins that bind to serum albumin, which can be used to form bispecifics to extend serum half-life. A range of species specific (human, mouse, cynomolgus monkey and dog) albumin binders have been generated and data will be presented that show that these molecules significantly extend the serum half-life of the Affimer scaffold and therefore offer a valuable alternative to other methods for the creation of biotherapeutics with long serum half-life.

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For further information from Avacta Group plc, please contact:

 
 Avacta Group plc                        Tel: +44 (0) 
  Alastair Smith, Chief Executive         844 414 0452 
  Officer                                 www.avacta.com 
  Tony Gardiner, Chief Financial 
  Officer 
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  Geoff Nash / Giles Rolls - Nominated    207 220 0500 
  Adviser                                 www.finncap.com 
  Tim Redfern / Alice Lane / Nikita 
  Jain - Corporate Broking 
 
  WG Partners                             Tel: +44 (0) 
  Nigel Birks / Nigel Barnes              203 705 9318 
  David Wilson / Claes Spang              Tel: +44 (0) 
                                          203 705 9217 
                                          www.wgpartners.co.uk 
 Zyme Communications (Trade and          Tel: [phone] 
  Regional Media)                         502 947 
  Katie Odgaard                           [e-mail] 
 
  Yellow Jersey (Financial Media          Tel: [phone] 
  and IR)                                 947137 
  Sarah Hollins                           [e-mail] 
 

About Avacta Group plc (www.avacta.com)

Avacta's principal focus is on its proprietary Affimer(R) 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 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 commercialising non-therapeutic Affimer reagents through licensing to developers of life sciences research tools and diagnostics.

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This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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November 13, 2017 02:00 ET (07:00 GMT)