REACH - a non-regulatory announcement

AIM: FIPP

06 May 2025

Frontier IP Group plc

("Frontier IP" or the "Group")

Portfolio news - The Vaccine Group's African Swine Fever vaccine candidate enters animal trials

Frontier IP, a specialist in commercialising intellectual property, today notes the following announcement from portfolio company The Vaccine Group ("TVG" or the "Company") that a vaccine candidate developed in collaboration with The Pirbright Institute to combat African Swine Fever ("ASF") has entered animal trials.

ASF is a highly contagious, epidemic and viral disease that can prove fatal to pigs. In some cases, mortality rates reach 100 per cent. The economic effects are severe. Steps to fight the disease include mass culling, export restrictions and other trade disruptions. In China alone, ASF is estimated to have caused economic damage worth $119 billion in a decade¹ , with a particularly bad outbreak in 2019 resulting in a 0.8 per cent hit to Chinese GDP². Since 2022, it has been reported in 64 countries.

There are no safe and effective vaccines currently available. University of Plymouth spin out TVG and The Pirbright Institute started collaborating on a vaccine in 2024, a project backed by funding through a  Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council ("BBSRC") Industrial Partnership Award. The BBSRC is part of UK Research and Innovation.

The ASF vaccine candidate is part of an expanding pipeline of vaccines and biotherapeutics being developed by TVG targeting 12 different livestock and companion animal diseases.

Frontier IP holds a 16.7 per cent equity stake in the Company.

Frontier IP Chief Executive Officer Neil Crabb said: "The ASF vaccine entering animal trials is an important milestone, not just for TVG, but more broadly for efforts to stop this devastating disease. ASF has now emerged as a rapidly spreading global threat, yet there is no safe and effective vaccine - and vaccines are the most potent means of preventing disease."

¹Schulz, K., C. Staubach, S. Blome, I. Nurmoja, A. Viltrop and F.J. Conraths. 2019. African swine fever: Fast and furious or slow and steady? Viruses 11(10), 86

²https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00362-

The Vaccine Group statement begins:

TVG African Swine Fever vaccine candidate enters animal trials

Over the past 15 years African Swine Fever (ASF) has developed into an epidemic affecting pig producers globally. Until that point ASF was confined largely to endemic infection in a number of sub-Saharan African countries. Since the first report of the genotype II virus being present in Georgia in the Caucasus region in 2007, ASF has extended its geographical distribution and is now present in large parts of Eastern, Central and Southern Europe.

Furthermore, in 2018 ASF was introduced into China, and has since spread widely in the region. In 2021, a further long-distance jump occurred, and ASF was reported first in the Dominican Republic and later in Haiti. This massive geographical expansion over the past 18 years, makes ASF a truly global issue and the risk of further dissemination of into disease free areas is considered high.

TVG has been working in collaboration with world experts on the disease at The Pirbright Institute (Pirbright) in Surrey, England for more than six years to develop an ASF vaccine for the improved control of this global ASF epidemic.

Last year our partners at The Pirbright Institute were awarded an Industry Partnership Award by BBSRC to work with us on our bovine herpesvirus-vectored vaccine against ASF. This vaccine delivers several antigenic proteins derived from the ASF virus and is inherently compatible with a DIVA approach to diagnostics and surveillance. Animal trials are now underway: pigs have been vaccinated already and will be challenged using a virulent genotype II ASF virus strain in a model developed recently at Pirbright to mimic natural routes of infection. The outcome of this clinical study will be made available publicly as soon as possible.

The development of an effective vaccine has enormous value from an animal welfare, food security and commercial perspective. There is no widely available vaccine against ASF even for the genotype II that is the cause of the current global epidemic. Recent limited introductions of a live attenuated vaccine in south east Asia have been associated with some safety concerns (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41541-025-01099-9), an issue that TVG's vaccine would address. To keep abreast of the latest developments in ASF research our CEO Jeremy Salt will be attending the upcoming Global Alliance for ASF Research (GARA) Scientific Meeting at the FAO's headquarters in Rome later this month, where he is due to join the GARA Executive Committee as Finance Director.

Jeremy Salt, TVG CEO commented:  "It is very exciting right now to be on the verge of seeing this pig challenge trial data with our jointly developed novel ASF vaccine. This represents the fruition of several years of successful collaborative work between TVG and Pirbright to get to this point. The continuing need for an effective ASF vaccine is very clear."

The Vaccine Group Statement ends

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Frontier IP unites science, finance and industry by identifying strong intellectual property and accelerating its development through a range of commercialisation services. A critical part of the Group's work is involving relevant industry partners at an early stage of development to ensure technology meets real world demands and needs.

The Group looks to build and grow a portfolio of equity stakes and licence income by taking an active involvement in spin-out companies, including support for fund raising and collaboration with relevant industry partners at an early stage of development.

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