Business
Affimers in Scientific Publications
Affimers in Scientific Publications.
About this update from Avacta Group Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n \nRNS Number : 3359U Avacta Group PLC 24 October 2017 \n\n \n \n24 October 2017\n \nAvacta Group plc\n(\"Avacta\",\"the Group\" or \"the Company\")\n \nRecord Year for Affimers in Scientific Publications\n \n \nAvacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to announce that 2017 has been a record year for scientific publications using Affimer reagents, with nine scientific papers reporting the work of leading groups world-wide.\n \nTwo recent papers from the world-renowned laboratory of David Komander at the University of Cambridge have been published in two important international journals - Molecular Cell, and Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. These research articles describe the use of Affimer reagents that recognise important cell signals called the \"diubiquitin linkages\", which are thought to be involved in a wide range of diseases. Affimers have been generated that are specific to two of the diubiquitin linkages, for which no antibodies exist and the work has revealed hitherto unknown biology. \n \nAnother powerful example of the broad utility of Affimer binders, as research and diagnostic reagents, was a paper in the journal eLife from a group at the University of Leeds, in collaboration with numerous other scientists around the world. In this paper, the performance of Affimer reagents that bind to twelve different targets was compared with antibodies across seven different applications. The paper showcases the key benefits of Affimer technology: high target specificity, intracellular activity, small size and wide target range. \n \nThe interest that a scientific paper generates is assessed by the tracking web site Altmetric. Altmetric ranks the attention that the Affimer paper in eLife received, as being in the top 5% of all the 8.4 million papers ever tracked.\n \nDr Alastair Smith, Avacta Group Chief Executive Officer, commented:\n\"Independent scientific reports featuring Affimer reagents are strong validations of the technology and highly influential indirect marketing. During 2017, nine Affimer scientific papers have been published, compared with two in 2016 and four in 2015, and are being read by an ever widening audience; a strong indication of the growing awar...