Exercise of Share Options and Director Dealings

Abzena plc

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

Exercise of share options and director dealings

Cambridge, UK, 1 April 2016, Abzena plc (AIM: ABZA) announces that a total of 671,494 new ordinary shares of £0.002 each in the Company ("Ordinary Shares") have been issued and allotted following the exercise of share options by directors and other employees. The new Ordinary Shares rank pari passu with the Company's existing issued Ordinary Shares and have been admitted to trading on AIM under the Company's block admission.

1 As enlarged by the issue of 671,494 new Ordinary Shares pursuant to option exercises.

Director transfers of Ordinary Shares

The Company was also notified today that John Burt has transferred 40,000 Ordinary Shares (at 49.5 pence per share) into his personal pension. Similarly, Julian Smith has transferred 52,000 Ordinary Shares (at 49.5 pence per share) into his personal pension. These transactions have no effect on the beneficial ownership of Ordinary Shares held by John Burt and Julian Smith and their direct and indirect interests remain as set out in the table above.

Total voting rights

Following the issue of 671,494 new Ordinary Shares pursuant to the option exercises set out above, the Company's issued share capital comprises 136,881,942 Ordinary Shares with voting rights. No Ordinary Shares are held in Treasury. The total number of voting rights in the Company is therefore 136,881,942. This figure of 136,881,942 Ordinary Shares may be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change in their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the FCA's Disclosure and Transparency Rules.

For more information, please contact:

About Abzena

Abzena (AIM: ABZA) provides proprietary technologies and complementary services to enable the development and manufacture of biopharmaceutical products, a growing area that requires specialist knowledge and expertise. The Group has a global customer base which includes the majority of the top 20 biopharmaceutical companies as well as large and small biotech companies and academic groups.

The term "Abzena inside" is used by Abzena to describe products that have been created using its proprietary technologies and are being developed by its partners, and include Composite Human Antibodies™ and ThioBridge™ antibody drug conjugates. Abzena has the potential to earn future licence fees, milestone payments and/or royalties on "Abzena inside" products.

Abzena offers the following services and technologies across its principal sites in Cambridge (UK), San Diego, California (USA) and Bristol, Pennsylvania (USA).

§ Immunogenicity assessment, protein engineering to create humanized antibodies and deimmunised therapeutic proteins, and cell line development for manufacture.

§ Contract process development and manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, including monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins, vaccines, and gene therapy and cell therapy products, for preclinical and clinical studies.

§ Proprietary site-specific conjugation technologies for antibody drug conjugate development and solutions for optimizing the therapeutic properties of biopharmaceuticals.

§ Contract chemistry and bioconjugation business focused on ADCs and is establishing the capability to manufacture ADCs to GMP standards.

For more information, please see www.abzena.com