11 Feburary 2020
Avacta Group plc
("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")
Share Incentive Plan/Issue of Equity
Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to announce that as part of its HMRC Approved Share Incentive Plan ("SIP") Award Scheme, ordinary shares of 10p each in the Company ("Ordinary Shares") up to a value of £3,000 per employee will be issued at the prevailing middle market price at the close of business on 07 February 2020 to all eligible employees. These shares awarded will form part of the employee's remuneration package.
Accordingly, an additional 101,701 Ordinary Shares have been issued as part of the SIP Award Scheme to eligible employees.
Application has been made for the Ordinary Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM and dealings are expected to commence on 17 February 2020 ("Admission"). The Ordinary Shares will rank pari passu with the existing Ordinary Shares of the Company.
Following Admission, the Company's enlarged issued share capital will be 176,036,837. This figure may be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change in their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the FCA's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.
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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 |
Tel: +44 (0) 844 414 0452 www.avacta.com |
finnCap Ltd (Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker) Geoff Nash / Giles Rolls - Corporate Finance Tim Redfern - ECM |
Tel: +44 (0) 207 220 0500 www.finncap.com |
Yellow Jersey PR (Financial Media and IR) Sarah Hollins Henry Wilkinson Emma Becirovic Zyme Communications (Trade and Regional Media) Katie Odgaard |
Tel: +44 (0)7764 947 137 Tel: +44 (0)7951 402 336 [email protected] Tel: +44 (0)7787 502 947 [email protected] |
About Avacta Group plc - https://www.avacta.com
Avacta is developing novel cancer immunotherapies combining its two proprietary platforms - Affimer® biotherapeutics and pre|CISION™ 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 Company's therapeutics development activities are based in Cambridge, UK.
The Company benefits from near-term revenues generated from Affimer reagents for diagnostics, bioprocessing and research, through a separate business unit based in Wetherby, UK.
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 pre|CISION targeted chemotherapy platform, releases active chemotherapy only in the tumour, thereby limiting systemic exposure and damage to healthy tissues, and thereby 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 drug, a pre|CISION targeted form of the standard-of-care Doxorubicin, into the clinic in the middle of 2020.
Avacta has established drug development partnerships with pharma and biotech, including with Moderna Therapeutics Inc., a deal with LG Chem worth up to $310m, and a partnership with ADC Therapeutics. Avacta actively seeks to license its proprietary platforms in a range of therapeutic areas.
Avacta diagnostics business unit works with partners world-wide to develop Affimers for evaluation by those third parties with the objective of establishing royalty bearing license deals. The Company is also developing a small in-house pipeline of Affimer-based diagnostic assays for licensing.
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