Avacta Group PLC Cancer Expert joins Scientific Advisory Board
07 November 2016 - 6:00PM
RNS Non-Regulatory
TIDMAVCT
Avacta Group PLC
07 November 2016
7 November 2016
Avacta Group plc
("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")
World-leading cancer stem cell expert joins Avacta Scientific
Advisory Board
Appointment of Professor Gerard Evan further supports Affimer
immuno-oncology therapeutics programme
Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer(R)
biotherapeutics and research reagents, today announced it has
appointed Professor Gerard Evan, FRS, to its therapeutics
Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Evan brings world-leading
expertise in immuno-oncology and cancer stem cell research to
support the Group's development of oncology biotherapeutics based
on its proprietary Affimer technology.
Professor Evan's research focuses on the molecular basis of
cancer. He was formerly Gerson and Barbara Bass Baker Distinguished
Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of California San
Francisco and Co-leader of the Cell Cycling and Signaling Program
at the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center. In 2009 he was elected to
the Sir William Dunn Chair of Biochemistry and Head of Biochemistry
in the University of Cambridge.
Professor Evan has a BA in Biochemistry from the University of
Oxford and a PhD in Molecular Immunology from the University of
Cambridge. He was awarded the Pfizer prize in Biology in 1995, and
in 1996 was elected as the Royal Society's Napier Professor of
Cancer Research. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the UK
Academy of Medical Sciences and the European Molecular Biology
Organization. Professor Evan has also held the Neal Levitan
Research Chair of the Brain Tumor Society and a Senior Scholarship
from the Ellison Medical Research Foundation for Aging.
Alastair Smith, Avacta Group Chief Executive, commented:
"We are delighted that Professor Evan has joined Avacta's
therapeutics Scientific Advisory Board. His deep knowledge of the
molecular mechanisms of cancer will be a great asset to the Company
and in particular his pioneering work in the area of cancer stem
cell biology could help create novel and highly valuable Affimer
therapies in this emerging area.
Gerard is joining us at an exciting time. We recently announced
the important milestone of achieving positive results from the
first animal safety and efficacy studies with our lead
immuno-oncology candidate, a PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor.
This success, and the continued good progress across all other
programmes in the past year, has served to further strengthen our
belief that the Affimer technology has huge potential as a
therapeutic platform and in other non-therapeutic applications. We
continue to focus on developing both our internal and partnered
therapeutic programmes towards clinical validation and on
commercialising Affimer reagents in multiple markets."
ENDS
Notes to Editors
For further information from Avacta Group plc, please
contact:
Avacta Group plc Tel: +44 (0) 844 414 0452
Alastair Smith, Chief Executive www.avacta.com
Officer
Tony Gardiner, Chief Financial
Officer
finnCap Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 207 220 0500
Geoff Nash / Giles Rolls www.finncap.com
- Nominated Adviser
Tim Redfern / Alice Lane
- Corporate Broking Tel: +44 (0) 203 705 9318
Tel: +44 (0) 203 705 9217
WG Partners www.wgpartners.co.uk
David Wilson
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Claes Spang
FTI Consulting (Financial Tel: +44 (0) 203 727 1000
Media and IR) avacta@fticonsulting.com
Simon Conway / Stephanie
Cuthbert / Natalie Garland-Collins
Zyme Communications (Trade Tel: +44 (0)7787 502 947
and Regional Media) katie.odgaard@zymecommunications.com
Katie Odgaard
For a high resolution image please contact
katie.odgaard@zymecommunications.com
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 $75bn 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 targets to enable diagnostics, research assays
and therapeutics. Avacta has created multiple Affimer libraries of
around 10 billion individual Affimer molecules each that can be
screened to identify those Affimer molecules that bind to a chosen
target. Because of their small size and simple structure, Affimer
proteins can easily be formatted to deliver the right properties
for different therapeutic applications. They can be fused to create
multi-specific molecules, modified to carry a toxin, or expressed
and remain functional inside cells. Affimer proteins also provide
significant advantages over antibodies in terms of
manufacturability.
Avacta has a pre-clinical therapeutic 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.
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
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