TIDMAVCT
RNS Number : 9856M
Avacta Group PLC
20 September 2023
20 September 2023
Avacta Group plc
("Avacta" or the "Group" or the "Company")
Appointment of Dr. Christina Coughlin as a consultant
Related party transaction notification
Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), a life sciences company developing
innovative, targeted oncology drugs and powerful diagnostics, today
announces that, according to the AIM rules governing Related Party
Transactions, that it has entered into a consultancy agreement with
Dr. Christina Coughlin (the "Consultancy Agreement"), currently a
Non-Executive Director of the Group, as it seeks to appoint a
full-time Chief Medical Officer.
The continuing very positive clinical progress of AVA6000 has
validated the tumour targeting capability of the pre|CISION(TM)
platform. This has opened up the potential for multiple commercial
opportunities, and the scope for using pre|CISION(TM) to create a
pipeline of new tumour-targeted cancer therapies is extensive. The
Company's clinical strategy is key to fully exploiting this
opportunity through a combination of in-house development and an
active licensing and commercial partnerships programme. Therefore,
the Company is seeking to add a full-time Chief Medical Officer
(CMO) with responsibility for driving the Company's clinical
strategy.
In advance of appointing a full-time CMO, the Company will
leverage the expertise of Dr. Coughlin on a temporary basis through
the Consultancy Agreement. Dr. Coughlin is a highly experienced
clinical oncologist with a broad background in biotechnology,
global pharmaceuticals, and comprehensive experience in drug
development from pre-IND to filing. Dr Coughlin also has a proven
track record of building drug development teams in global
companies.
Dr. Coughlin, M.D., Ph.D. was previously the Chief Executive
Officer of Cytolmmune Therapeutics LLC, a clinical-stage
biotechnology company, focused on the development and
commercialisation of novel cancer immunotherapy products designed
to use the patient's own immune system to eliminate cancer cells.
She also served as Chief Medical Officer to Rubius Therapeutics.
Inc, where she led the clinical development, translational medicine
and regulatory efforts in the allogeneic red cell therapy platform.
Prior to Rubius, Dr. Coughlin was with Tmunity Therapeutics, Inc.,
where she served as Chief Medical Officer and was responsible for
the development of autologous CAR-T and TCR-T cellular
therapies.
Dr. Coughlin will retain her position on the Avacta Board as a
Non-Executive Director.
Avacta also announces that Neil Bell, Chief Development Officer
of the Group, will be leaving the Company. Under Neil's guidance
over the last three years, the Company has established a clinical
development infrastructure which will help support the Company's
clinical programmes going forwards. Avacta wishes him well in the
future.
Under the terms of the Consultancy Agreement, Avacta will pay Dr
Coughlin a monthly consultancy fee of US$15,000 for an initial
period of six months, with the option to extend by a further six
months to a total of 12 months subject to the agreement of the
Company and Dr. Coughlin. This fee is capped at US$180,000 in
total.
The Consultancy Agreement amounts to a related party transaction
within the meaning of the AIM Rules for Companies. The Directors
who are independent of the related party transaction (being all the
Directors other than Dr. Christina Coughlin) having consulted with
Stifel, the Company's nominated adviser, consider the terms of the
Consultancy Agreement to be fair and reasonable insofar as the
shareholders of the Company are concerned.
Dr Alastair Smith, Chief Executive of Avacta Group
commented:
"The Board and I would like to thank Neil for his hard work over
the past few years in taking our first programme into the clinic.
We are now moving from a phase of building our clinical development
capabilities to leveraging that capacity across multiple
programmes. It is therefore appropriate that we transition the
Senior Leadership team to incorporate medical oncology experience.
We are fortunate to have the opportunity to benefit in the near
term from Christina's immense experience during this exciting
period as we seek to appoint a full-time Chief Medical
Officer."
Dr Christina Coughlin, commented:
"The potential of the pre|CISION(TM) platform to deliver
significant improvement to cancer patient outcomes is very
exciting. The team, led by Neil, has done an excellent job and I am
delighted to have the opportunity to work with them to complete the
hugely successful dose escalation study and move into the dose
expansion study in soft tissue sarcoma patients later this
year.
"Beyond that we have potential to exploit AVA6000 to treat other
cancers such as breast and ovarian and a wealth of opportunities to
build our pipeline and partnerships. I am looking forward to
working with the team on this strategy at this very exciting
time."
ENDS
For further information from Avacta Group plc, please
contact:
Avacta Group plc Tel: +44 (0) 1904 21 7070
Alastair Smith, Chief Executive www.avacta.com
Officer
Tony Gardiner, Chief Financial Officer
Michael Vinegrad, Group Communications
Director
Stifel Nicolaus Europe Limited (Nomad Tel: +44 (0) 207 710 7600
and Broker) www.stifel.com
Nicholas Moore / Nick Adams / Samira
Essebiyea / Nick Harland / Dhiren
Suares / William Palmer-Brown
ICR Consilium (Media and IR) avacta@consilium-comms.com
Mary-Jane Elliott / Jessica Hodgson
/ Sukaina Virji
About Avacta Group plc - https://www.avacta.com
Avacta Group plc is a life sciences company working to improve
people's health and well-being through innovative oncology drugs
and powerful diagnostics. Operating through two divisions,
Diagnostics and Therapeutics, the Group's mission is to provide
professionals and consumers with solutions that improve healthcare,
fitness and well-being.
Avacta's Therapeutics Division, a clinical stage oncology drug
innovator, is building a wholly owned pipeline of novel Affimer(R)
immunotherapies and pre|CISION(TM) tumour targeted chemotherapies.
This approach is designed to address the lack of a durable response
to current cancer immunotherapies experienced by most patients and
reduce the severe systemic toxicities caused by chemotherapies.
There are five programmes in the pipeline as well as several global
research collaborations and licensing partnerships. Avacta's lead
programme, AVA6000, is a preCISION(TM) tumour-targeted form of the
established chemotherapy doxorubicin. AVA6000 is in Phase I
clinical trials in patients with locally advanced or metastatic
selected solid tumours.
The Affimer(R) platform is an alternative to antibodies that has
been designed to address many of the drawbacks of antibodies which,
despite their shortcomings, currently dominate the
immuno-diagnostics and immuno-therapeutics markets.
The pre|CISION(TM) tumour targeting platform can be used to
modify a chemotherapy in order to selectively release the active
drug in tumour tissue thereby reducing the systemic exposure that
causes damage to healthy tissues. pre|CISION(TM) modified
chemotherapies are designed to reduce the side effects and improve
the overall safety and therapeutic potential of these powerful
anti-cancer treatments.
Avacta's Diagnostics Division develops and supplies a broad
range of in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) solutions. The Division is
growing rapidly through an M&A strategy to deliver a global
scale IVD business providing market leading solutions for
healthcare professionals and consumers to inform treatment and
monitor health and well-being. In October 2022, Avacta acquired
Launch Diagnostics which serves the hospital pathology laboratory
market in the UK and Europe. In May 2023, Avacta acquired Coris
Bioconcept a Belgium based lateral flow test developer and
manufacturer adding a broad range of marketed professional-use
rapid tests into the Diagnostics Division. Avacta Diagnostic's
research and development centre in Wetherby, UK uses its
proprietary Affimer(R) platform to differentiate immunodiagnostic
products to provide marketing leading performance.
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END
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