Avacta to Present at Major European Conference

12 November 2018

Avacta Group plc

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

Avacta's Chief Scientific Officer to Present Recent Data at Major European Conference

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer^® biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to announce that its Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Amrik Basran, will be presenting at the Protein Engineering Society of Europe meeting, which is taking place in Lisbon on 14 November 2018.  Dr Basran will be presenting recent data relating to the pre-clinical development of the Group's lead therapeutic programme, a PD-L1/LAG-3 single molecule bispecific.

Dr Basran will focus particularly on the development of novel Affimer^® bispecific formats that inhibit two immune checkpoints simultaneously.  PD-L1 plays a key role in suppressing the immune system, and by blocking this checkpoint protein on tumour cells, it assists the immune system's attack on the cancer.  The blocking of LAG-3 on T-cells helps to maintain the immune system attack and reduce T-cell exhaustion.

The Group is developing this single molecule bispecific therapy with a view to entering phase I clinical development in 2020, which will yield first-in-man clinical data for the Affimer^® platform.  Avacta is also building a pipeline of novel immuno-oncology Affimer^® assets for clinical development and licensing.

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About Avacta Group plc (www.avacta.com)

Avacta's principal focus is on its proprietary Affimer^® technology which is a novel engineered alternative to antibodies that has wide application in Life Sciences for diagnostics, therapeutics and general research and development.

Antibodies dominate markets worth in excess of $100bn despite their shortcomings. Affimer^® technology has been designed to address many of these negative performance issues, principally; the time taken to generate new antibodies, the reliance on an animal's immune response, poor specificity in many cases, and batch to batch variability.  Affimer^® technology is based on a small protein that can be quickly generated to bind with high specificity and affinity to a wide range of protein targets.

Avacta has a pre-clinical biotech development programme with an in-house focus on immuno-oncology as well as partnered development programmes. Avacta is commercialising non-therapeutic Affimer^® reagents through licensing to developers of life sciences research tools and diagnostics.

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