Fusion Antibodies plc

("Fusion" or the "Company")

R&D update: Mammalian Display service

New commerical service from OptiMAL® programme

Fusion Antibodies plc (AIM: FAB), specialists in pre-clinical antibody discovery, engineering and supply for both therapeutic drug and diagnostic applications, announces that is has launched a new commercial service from its R&D programme, named Mammalian Display, for high volume mammalian cell surface expression and screening of antibodies.

Mammalian Display is the first service from the Company's ongoing OptiMAL® programme which Fusion has commercialised and is now offering to clients. The service is particularly suited to companies specialising in the identification of therapeutic antibodies from focussed libraries of sequences, such as would be required by those entities using artificial intelligence ("AI") or machine learning ("ML") which can require the expression and screening of small libraries of tens of thousands of antibodies.

Fusion collaborates with its clients in every stage of pre-clinical antibody development, with decades of experience and unique proprietary platforms. A fully integrated end-to-end service from therapeutic target nomination and discovery through to stable cell line development in readiness for GMP production is also available. Initial market research that the Company has conducted with AI/ML experts has confirmed that there is a need for expression of focussed libraries of antibodies in the way delivered by the Mammalian Display service.

The Company is continuing to work on other aspects of the OptiMAL® programme, and in particular the development of the fully human antibody library.

Fusion Antibodies CEO, Adrian Kinkaid said: "We are delighted to be able to announce the successful development of the Mammalian Display technology, an output from our OptiMAL® research programme. As our industry rapidly turns to find new ways to hasten the development of better bio-therapeutics to the clinic, we also anticipate deploying these capabilities to bring AI generated antibody sequences out of world class computer algorithms and into a world class antibody laboratory."

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About Fusion Antibodies plc

Fusion is a Belfast based contract research organisation ("CRO") providing a range of antibody engineering services for the development of antibodies for both therapeutic drug and diagnostic applications.

The Company's ordinary shares were admitted to trading on AIM on 18 December 2017. Fusion provides a broad range of services in antibody generation, development, production, characterisation and optimisation. These services include antigen expression, antibody production, purification and sequencing, antibody humanisation using Fusion's proprietary CDRx ^TM platform and the production of antibody generating stable cell lines to provide material for use in clinical trials. Since 2012, the Company has successfully sequenced and expressed over 250 antibodies and successfully completed over 200 humanisation projects and has an international, blue-chip client base, which has included eight of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies by revenue.

The Company was established in 2001 as a spin out from Queen's University Belfast. The Company's mission is to enable pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies to develop innovative products in a timely and cost-effective manner for the benefit of the global healthcare industry. Fusion Antibodies provides a broad range of services in antibody generation, development, production, characterisation and optimisation.

Fusion Antibodies growth strategy is based on combining the latest technological advances with cutting edge science to deliver new platforms that will enable Pharma and Biotech companies get to the clinic faster, with the optimal drug candidate and ultimately speed up the drug development process. 

The global monoclonal antibody therapeutics market was valued at $135.4 billion in 2018 and is forecast to surpass $212.6 billion in 2022, an increase at a CAGR of 12.0 per cent. for the period 2018 to 2022. In 2017, seven of the world's ten top selling drugs were antibody-based therapeutics with the combined annual sales of these drugs exceeding $63.2 billion.