New appointments to Scientific Advisory Board

RNS Number : 8059K

Avacta Group PLC

06 September 2021

 

6 September 2021

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")

Avacta announces new appointments to the Scientific Advisory Board of its Therapeutics Division

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative cancer therapies and powerful diagnostics based on its proprietary Affimer® and pre|CISION™ platforms, announces new appointments to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), reflecting the progress of the Therapeutics Division and Avacta's transition to a clinical stage Company.

The SAB provides the Therapeutics Division with scientific and clinical advice to support its drug development decision making and pipeline strategy. The three new members of the SAB are Professor James Spicer MB., BA., PhD., FRCP , Professor Krishnan Komanduri, MD, and Dr Stéphane Champiat MD, PhD.

James Spicer is Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at King's College London and Consultant in Medical Oncology at Guy's & St. Thomas' Hospitals, London. He has established and runs a world-leading Phase 1 clinical trials programme in solid tumour oncology at Guy's Hospital, where the portfolio of studies includes novel immunotherapies discovered and developed at King's as well as many externally sponsored studies.

Krishna Komanduri is Chief of the Division of Transplantation and Cellular Therapy, and Associate Chief Medical Officer for Clinical Innovation, at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, Miami. He is also a Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology and a physician-scientist with a laboratory focusing on T-cell immunology in cancer. Dr. Komanduri serves on the United Health Care Oncology Advisory Committee and is a past Chair of the American Society of Hematology Scientific Committee on Host Defense, is the current Chair of the ASTCT Cellular Therapy Committee and Chair-Elect of the Government Relations Committee.

Stéphane Champiat MD, PhD is a physician at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Center in Paris, where he focuses on the development of cancer therapeutics, in particular, new immunotherapies. He has been principal investigator or co-investigator of more than 50 Phase I clinical trials run by many of the world's leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies. He is particularly involved in the coordination of the immunotherapy toxicity management program and the development of the intra-tumoral immunotherapy strategy at Gustave Roussy.

Dr Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Avacta Group, commented:

"We are pleased, and honoured, to welcome three world-leading oncologists to Avacta's Therapeutics Division's Scientific Advisory Board, under the continuing Chairmanship of Dr Mike Owen. The wealth of knowledge these individuals will bring, both scientific and clinical, as well as their strategic and commercial insight, will be a major benefit to us as we expand our preclinical programmes and take the next drug candidates into the clinic."

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For further information from Avacta Group plc, please contact:

Avacta Group plc Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer Tony Gardiner, Chief Financial Officer Michael Vinegrad, Group Communications Director	Tel: [phone] www.avacta.com
Stifel Nicolaus Europe Limited (Nomad and Broker) Nicholas Moore / Nick Adams / Fred Walsh / Ben Maddison	Tel: [phone] www.stifel.com
FTI Consulting (Financial Media and IR) Simon Conway / Stephanie Cuthbert	Tel: [phone] [e-mail]
Zyme Communications (Trade and Regional Media) Lily Jeffery	Tel: [phone] [e-mail]

About Avacta Group plc - https://www.avacta.com

Avacta Group is developing novel cancer immunotherapies and powerful diagnostics based on its two proprietary platforms - Affimer® biologics and pre|CISION™ tumour targeted chemotherapies.

The Affimer® platform is an alternative to antibodies derived from a small human protein. Despite their shortcomings, antibodies currently dominate markets, such as diagnostics and therapeutics, worth in excess of $100bn. Affimer technology has been designed to address many of these negative performance issues, principally: the time taken to generate new antibodies and the reliance on an animal's immune response; poor specificity in many cases; their large size, complexity and high cost of manufacture.

Avacta's pre|CISION™ targeted chemotherapy platform releases active chemotherapy in the tumour, which limits the systemic exposure that causes damage to healthy tissues, and thereby improves the overall safety and therapeutic potential of these powerful anti-cancer treatments.

The Group comprises two divisions: The therapeutics development activities are based in Cambridge, UK and the Group is generating near-term revenues from Affimer reagents for diagnostics, bioprocessing and research, through a separate diagnostics business unit based in Wetherby, UK.

Avacta's Diagnostics Division works with partners world-wide to develop bespoke Affimer® reagents for third party products. The Group is also developing an in-house pipeline of Affimer-based diagnostic assays including the AffiDX® SARS-CoV-2 Lateral Flow Rapid Antigen Test and AffiDX® BAMS™ SARS-CoV-2 Assay in partnership with Adeptrix Inc.

Avacta's Therapeutics Division is working to deliver a more tolerable and durable treatment response for oncology patients who do not respond to existing immunotherapies. By combining its two proprietary platforms the Group is building a wholly owned pipeline of clinically differentiated cancer therapies, aiming to extend the therapeutic benefits to all cancer patients. In 2021 Avacta transitioned to become a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, commencing a phase I first-in-human, open label, dose-escalation and expansion study of AVA6000, a pro-doxorubicin, the Group's lead pre|CISION™ prodrug, in patients with locally advanced or metastatic selected solid tumours.

Avacta has established drug development partnerships with pharma and biotech, including a research collaboration with ModernaTX,Inc. (formerly Moderna Therapeutics Inc.), a multi-target deal with LG Chem worth up to $400m, a joint venture in South Korea with Daewoong Pharmaceutical focused on cell and gene therapies incorporating Affimer immune-modulators, a partnership with ADC Therapeutics to develop Affimer-drug conjugates and a collaboration with Point Biopharma to develop radiopharmaceuticals based on the pre|CISION™ platform. Avacta continues to actively seek to license its proprietary platforms in a range of therapeutic areas.

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