2nd Jun 2014 09:04
LONDON (Alliance News) - Avacta Group PLC Monday said it had secured a funding award from the UK's innovation agency to support it in developing affirmer technology as a potential way of helping develop new cancer treatments.
The company is developing affimers, which are engineered alternatives to antibodies designed to address many of the performance issues currently experienced with antibodies, including the time taken to generate new antibodies, specificity and batch to batch variation.
It said it had got the award from the Technology Strategy Board in the UK, but didn't say how much it is worth.
"The Smart Award will contribute towards the development of the data pack to support licensing of Affimers as therapeutic agents. The award will support the development of a high affinity Affimer targeting a key biological pathway involved in several human cancers. Targeting this pathway will allow the creation of a biotherapeutic to meet increasing demand for new drugs for the treatment of cancer," the company said in a statement.
Over the next 18 months, the company will work on lead identification, assessment of developability criteria for manufacturing, and a preclinical target validation study.
"In order to secure high value license deals with upfront payments we need to generate data showing that Affimers are suitable in terms of properties like immunogenicity, clearance times, ease of manufacturing scale up and topical delivery," Chief Executive Alastair Smith said.
The company said it had created a new unit, called Promexus, to generate a data pack which it will use to help it secure commercial partnerships and licensing opportunities in therapeutics.
It announced its first therapeutic licensing deal to Blueberry Therapeutics in October 2013 to use Affimers in the development of new therapies for the treatment of multi-drug resistant bacterial infections.
Avacta shares were up 0.9% at 1.14 pence Monday morning.
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @SteveMcGrath1
Copyright 2014 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Related Shares:
Avacta Group