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2 Biotech's Licence Affimers for Research Use
2 Biotech's Licence Affimers for Research Use.
About this update from Avacta Group Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n \nRNS Number : 7379F Avacta Group PLC 22 May 2017 \n\n22 May 2017\n \nAvacta Group plc\n(\"Avacta\" or \"the Group\" or \"the Company\")\n \nTwo US biotech companies licence Affimer reagents for research use\n \nExclusive licence deals follow successful custom Affimer evaluations\n \nAvacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and research reagents, is pleased to announce that two leading US biotech companies have separately taken exclusive rights to Affimer reagents for research and development use, to support their respective drug development programmes.\n \nAvacta has developed the Affimer technology platform to provide proprietary, high quality reagents to Life Sciences companies for therapeutic, diagnostic and research use. The Company continues to deliver on its licensing model under which it provides bespoke Affimer reagents, via fully funded development projects, for third party research use, incorporation into both diagnostic and other products, and for therapeutic development. \n \nFollowing technical evaluations, Avacta has agreed exclusive licensing arrangements for bespoke Affimer reagents with two US based biotech companies. In line with deals of this nature and sensitivity commercial terms cannot be disclosed. \n \nThe first, a global top fifteen biotech company, needed an Affimer reagent to capture a human protein with no cross-reactivity against the same protein from other species commonly used in drug development, such as rodent. No antibodies exist that are capable of providing this \"species specificity\" and the new Affimer reagent will allow the biotech partner to develop previously unavailable assays to support its drug development activities. A number of Affimer reagents which met these demanding criteria were generated by Avacta and, under the terms of the agreement, the biotech partner has been allowed to take exclusive rights to one of those Affimer molecules for research use.\n \nThe second, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, wished to detect a certain human protein, mutations of which are known to lead to worse overall survival rates in some cancers. This protein is one of a group of very similar proteins and no antibodies are available that can differentiate reliably between the different members of this prot...