Contract wins for life sciences company include deal with top five pharma firm

Life sciences business, Aptamer Group, has signed two contracts for the development of its Optimer binders, with a combined total value of up to £235,000.

York-based Aptamer develops custom affinity binders through its proprietary Optimer^® platform, which can serve as an alternative to antibodies and enable new approaches in therapeutics, diagnostics, and research applications.

Its first new contract, valued at up to £175,000, is with a top five pharmaceutical company.

As part of this, Aptamer will develop Optimer binders for use in immunohistochemistry (IHC) applications.

Following development, the binders could be integrated into companion diagnostics or as critical reagents to support the top five partner’s drug development pipeline, resulting in downstream royalties and/or licencing revenues for Aptamer.

This agreement is the sixth contract with this pharmaceutical partner for Optimer development across multiple applications.

The second deal, valued at up to £60,000, is with a global provider of specialty enzymes used widely throughout the life sciences sector.

Aptamer will develop Optimer binders as novel reagents to be incorporated into the partner’s life science and diagnostic assay kits.

Aptamer Group says it stands to earn milestone payments upon successful commercialisation and downstream high single digit royalties from the gross sales of all kits containing the developed Optimer.

Dr Arron Tolley, chief technical officer of Aptamer, said: “The repeat business from another of our top-five pharma partner validates the power of the Optimer platform to solve intractable problems associated with traditional ligands like antibodies in the area of immunohistochemistry (IHC) and supports our new business and patenting strategy.

“These smaller royalty bearing agreements to develop Optimer binders aligns with our business model to develop a diversified pipeline of technologies to deliver licence agreements across the life science sector.

“Unfortunately, due to confidentiality we cannot disclose the name of the partner or any other terms of the deal.

“Over the past year, the new management team has successfully rebuilt the sales pipeline, and refocused the business to its pre-IPO model which continues to convert to signed deals – with opportunities to generate passive income through licensing and royalty-based deals.”