Our mission is to shape the future of medicine by developing safe and efficacious drugs, and powerful research and diagnostic tools, based on our proprietary Affimer® and pre|CISIONTM platforms.
Avacta is developing novel cancer immunotherapies combining its two proprietary platforms – Affimer® biotherapeutics and pre|CISIONTM 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 proprietary pre|CISIONTM 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. Avacta expects to take its first drug, a targeted form of the standard-of-care Doxorubicin, into the clinic in the middle of 2020.
By combining these two platforms the Company is building a 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 reagents business unit works with partners world-wide to develop Affimer proteins for evaluation by those third parties with the objective of establishing royalty bearing license deals with a particular focus on the diagnostics sector. The Company is also developing a small in-house pipeline of Affimer-based diagnostic assays for licensing.