Avacta & Pall Corp form new collaborative venture

RNS Number : 2762I

Avacta Group PLC

13 June 2011

 



Press release

13 June 2011

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or "the Group")

Avacta and Pall Life Sciences form new analytical services collaboration

Partnership creates a market leading bioprocess analysis service

Avacta Group plc (AIM:AVCT), a leading provider of analytics and diagnostics to the pharmaceutical and animal healthcare sectors, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a collaborative venture with Pall Corporation (NYSE:PLL) ("Pall"), a global leader in filtration, separation and purification, to deliver a market leading analytical service to biopharmaceutical developers.

Under the terms of the collaboration Pall will utilise the services of Avacta and market joint services with a focus in North America, and in certain other regions globally where Avacta is not currently represented. Pall's expertise in developing high yield purification processes for biopharmaceutical compounds is well recognised but the current state-of-the-art in process optimisation is enhanced by more information on how the structure and stability of compounds are affected by manufacturing or purification processes. Avacta's analytical capabilities provide a significant value add in this, and other areas, ensuring Pall's analytical service offering is the most comprehensive option for its customers involved in drug development.

The combined services are aimed at reducing drug development risk by giving customers greater insight into the effects of their manufacturing processes. They will leverage Avacta's expertise in analysis at the very early stages in drug development to provide customers with new opportunities to screen molecules early on, for their manufacturability as well as their functional properties.

The US biopharmaceuticals market is worth around $100bn and the provision of contract services into this rapidly growing sector is worth several billion dollars annually. Together the two companies will provide a market leading analytical service to assist biological drug developers reduce the costs of drug development through improved compound screening and optimisation of manufacturing and purification conditions. The services will be delivered through Pall's Scientific Laboratories Services global network and through Avacta at its laboratories in York, United Kingdom.

Alastair Smith, Chief Executive of Avacta Group commented: "Avacta's commercial partnership with Pall has, since inception, been intended as a wider and more strategic collaboration than just a distribution deal for our Optim technology. This services collaboration is the next step in the development of that partnership which gives Avacta an excellent route to market in the US and a new offering with the combined strength of the two companies' analytical services. Optim itself will be used to deliver some aspects of our unique services and exposure through services provision should help expand awareness of Optim product and consequently to drive unit sales and consumables usage in the future."

Ken Frank Senior Vice President of Pall Corporation and President of Pall's Biopharmaceutical Division commented: "This development in our collaboration with Avacta further strengthens Pall's position in providing leading, innovative solutions for biomolecular processes. We believe that we will help our customers, with better information provided by these services, to improve their decision making and save valuable time in the critically important job of getting new products to market."

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For further information please contact:

Avacta Group plc Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer	Tel:  [phone] www.avacta.com
Broker XCAP Securities plc John Grant/Karen Kelly/David Newton	Tel:  [phone] www.xcapgroup.com
Nominated Adviser Grant Thornton Corporate Finance Philip Secrett/Colin Aaronson	Tel:  [phone] www.grantthornton.co.uk
Media Enquiries Abchurch Communications Sarah Hollins/Adam Michael/Simone Elviss/ Oliver Hibberd	Tel: [phone] www.abchurch-group.com

Notes to Editors:

Avacta Group plc, a world leading, UK-based healthcare equipment and instrumentation business, provides innovative, high value proprietary technologies and services to the life sciences/healthcare sector through two operating divisions:

Avacta Analytical provides high-end analytical instrumentation and services to the biopharmaceutical sector, expected to be a $200bn revenues market by 2013 and the fastest growing part of the pharmaceutical industry. The Group's technologies are aimed at reducing the risks and expense associated with biological drug development and thereby reducing the final cost of drugs to patients. The Group's lead analytical instrument, Optim, is distributed through Pall Corporation in the US, Isogen Life Sciences in Europe, Cold Spring Biotech Corp in China and Taiwan and DKSH in Japan. Avacta sells Optim directly in the UK.

Avacta Animal Health provides diagnostic products and services for the $1.5bn global veterinary diagnostics market. Its aim is to equip veterinary professionals with high quality animal health and well-being information, through point of care diagnostics, reagents and testing kits and laboratory based testing. Avacta's AX-1 point of care immunoassay system is aimed at providing the veterinarian with rapid blood test results in the clinic. The initial range of tests launched with the AX-1 relates to Avacta's world leading allergy testing brand Sensitest®.Avacta is currently developing further assays for the AX-1 system to diagnose other diseases in companion animals. Longer term this technology will be transferred into the human clinical diagnostics market.

Avacta joined AIM in August 2006 and is based in Wetherby and York, England.

About Pall Life Sciences

Pall Life Sciences provides cutting-edge products and services to meet the demanding needs of customers discovering, developing and producing biotech drugs, vaccines and classic pharmaceuticals. Pall technologies are also used to collect and process blood components and help protect patients from hospital-acquired infections. The company's membranes and membrane devices optimize detection and sample preparation in the drug research, clinical diagnostics, genomics, and proteomics markets. Pall is a leading provider of separation systems and single-use filtration and purification technologies to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to support faster development of new drugs and vaccines that are safer and require less energy and water to produce.

About Pall Corporation

Pall Corporation (NYSE: PLL) is a filtration, separation and purification leader providing solutions to meet the critical fluid management needs of customers across the broad spectrum of life sciences and industry. Pall works with customers to advance health, safety and environmentally responsible technologies. The Company's engineered products enable process and product innovation and minimize emissions and waste. Pall Corporation, with total revenues of $2.4 billion for fiscal 2010, is an S&P 500 company with more than 10,000 employees serving customers worldwide. To see how Pall is helping enable a greener, safer, more sustainable future, visit www.pall.com/green.

 

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