Losses widen as R&D costs hit Avacta

Research costs set profitability at Wetherby-based Avacta back, but it has made major strides in the development of its Affirmer product, moving trials up to human samples.

Revenue for the six months to January 2017 increased 20% to £1.26m, reflecting growth in its animal health business.

However losses before tax widened to £3.9m for the half year, an increase n the £2m loss made in the same period last year.

This was directly due to research and development costs from the Affimer therapeutics programme, which increased to £1.28m from £460,000 in the same period in 2016.

But the ability f its Affirmer product to provoke an immune response has now been tested in humans, a major milestone for the group.

Alastair Smith, chief executive officer, commented: “During the period we made significant progress with our therapeutics programme, reporting positive results from the first in vivo studies. Additionally, we have today reported positive results from our first immunogenicity study of the Affimer platform using human samples. This is a critical data point supporting our conversations with potential pharma partners and keeps us on track to meet our objective to take the first Affimer candidate into clinical development in 2019.

“We also continue to demonstrate the differentiating strengths of our Affimer technology in other key applications and this is now translating into a growing custom Affimer order book and paid-for commercial evaluations. We remain confident that this could lead to the first license deal for an Affimer reagent in 2017.

“We expect to report on a number of significant value inflection points in the coming months and we look forward to keeping the market informed of our progress.”