Avacta Group plc (LON:AVCT), a biotechnology company developing novel cancer immunotherapies based on its proprietary Affimer® platform, has today announced that its Chief Executive Officer, Dr Alastair Smith, will present at the European Biotech Investor Day in New York City in the New York Times building on Thursday, August 1st organised by Solebury Trout and sponsored by Goodwin LLC, Deutsche Bank, H.C. Wainwright and Nasdaq.
Alastair’s presentation will discuss the Company’s drug development pipeline based on the combination of Affimer immunotherapies with tumour targeted chemotherapy aimed at addressing the lack of a durable response to current immunotherapies experienced by most cancer patients.
The presentation will be made available on the Avacta Group plc website: https://www.avacta.com/investors/documents
Avacta is developing novel cancer immunotherapies combining its two proprietary platforms – Affimer® biotherapeutics and tumour targeted chemotherapy. With this approach, the Company aims to address the lack of a durable response to current immunotherapies experienced by most patients.
The Affimer platform is an alternative to antibodies derived from a small human protein. Despite their shortcomings, antibodies currently dominate markets worth in excess of $100bn. Affimer technology has been designed to address many of these negative performance issues, principally: the time taken, and the reliance on an animal’s immune response, to generate new antibodies; poor specificity in many cases; large size and cost.
Avacta’s proprietary targeted chemotherapy platform, releases active drug only in the tumour, thereby limiting systemic exposure and improving the overall safety and therapeutic potential of these powerful anti-cancer treatments.
By combining these two platforms the Company is building a wholly owned pipeline of novel cancer therapies with the aim of creating effective treatments for all cancer patients including those who do not respond to existing immunotherapies. Avacta expects to take its first programme into the clinic in the first half of 2020.
Avacta has established drug development partnerships with pharma and biotech, including with Moderna Therapeutics Inc., and a deal with LG Chem worth up to $310m, and actively seeks to license its proprietary platforms in a range of therapeutic areas. The Company benefits from near-term revenues generated from Affimer reagents for diagnostics, bioprocessing and research, through a separate business unit.
