Contract wins and repeat business fuel progress at life sciences company

Aptamer Group, a developer of novel Optimer^® binders to enable innovation in the life sciences sector, says it is gaining commercial momentum as it releases its interim results for the six months ended 31 December 2024.

It records revenues of £700,000 (H1 2024: £300,000) and a cash balance at 31 December 2024 of £2m (H1 2024: £1.8m).

Aptamer completed a fundraising in August 2024 of £2.6m (net) at 0.2p per share and managed a further reduction of its fixed cost base to around £3m per annum during the period.

The business 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.

Dr Arron Tolley, chief executive officer, said: “I am pleased to report significant milestones across each of the group’s asset development programmes.

“This includes the initiation of human skin trials with Unilever for our Optimer deodorant additives. We have also validated our binders for Alzheimer’s disease diagnostics with clinical samples with solid results. 

“The group’s internal focus on drug delivery is moving forward at pace with success in lab-based tests for our fibrotic liver delivery vehicle with AstraZeneca and other internal validation work using the same delivery vehicle.

“In addition to technical progress, Aptamer is beginning to deliver strong and sustainable commercial momentum, signing multiple new contracts with global market-leading pharmaceutical companies, many of which represent repeat business.”

Aptamer notes its fee-for-service pipeline has delivered success across multiple customer projects.

These include agreements with top 20 pharmaceutical and leading biotechnology companies for Optimer development as critical reagents to support therapeutic development programmes. 

The firm also signed a contract extension with a top 20 pharmaceutical partner in December 2024 for the optimisation of developed binders to protein purification.