Stock markets in brief: Animalcare optimistic despite Brexit, Avacta gets involved with JV, EMIS reports £2.2m one-off charge and life sciences busine

VETERINARY medicines group Animalcare posted encouraging trading today, despite uncertainty following the Brexit decision fallout.

Revenues across the group were up by 8.6% to £14.7m and the company said that underlying operating profits are expected to be broadly in line with last year.

Animalcare said : “The result of the EU referendum has introduced some uncertainty in the UK economy and in particular sterling weakness which the Group will continue to monitor.

“This will impact the cost of a large proportion of our pharmaceutical products imported from mainland Europe, denominated in Euros, and microchips supplied in USD.

“However this is balanced in part by the increasing level of Euro-denominated sales outside the UK and in the short-term, our hedging position.”

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WETHERBY-BASED Avacta Group has announced it will be working with newcastle-based Glythera on developing targeted biotherapeutics as an alternative to antibody drugs.

The companies will develop materials and methods to be used in the generation of Avacta’s Affimer-drug conjugates.

The two businesses will partner to offer Affimer-drug conjugate development services, and licensing of the combined platform, to pharmaceutical developers.

Dr Alastair Smith, chief executive at Avacta, commented: “At the half year we set out a detailed commercial strategy for Affimer reagents and therapeutics.

“In that context we recently announced a collaboration with Mologic to develop Affimer based lateral flow devices which would open up the rapid diagnostics market opportunity and today we are very pleased to report the establishment of this collaboration with Glythera in the area of ADCs, another important application area for Affimer technology.

We are therefore confident that this partnership with Glythera will further demonstrate the utility of the Affimer platform as a powerful approach to generating a broad range of biotherapeutics, creating opportunities for third party licensing of the platform with the potential to generate long-term value for both companies.”

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HEALTHTECH business EMIS Group has said that whilst it is confident for the future, a cost reduction programme will incur a one-off charge of £2.2m in the first half.

It said that against the backdrop of political uncertainty, the programme is expanding, but that benefits will be seen in the first half.

Chris Spencer, CEO of EMIS Group, said: “EMIS Group has continued to deliver results in line with our expectations. While ongoing political and economic uncertainty causes both turbulence and sluggishness, nonetheless the NHS continues to understand that our digital technology and patient information platform represents a unique connected care solution to the challenge to deliver faster, better, more cost-effective care. We therefore remain confident in the outlook for the business.”

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LIFE SCIENCES business OptiBiotix Health has announced a new patent filing.

It protects its Lactobacillus plantarum strain along with other ingredients identified which act to reduce cardiovascular risk factors.

The company said that when used in combination with OptiBiotix’s cholesterol reducing strain the combination has the potential to reduce multiple cardiovascular risk factors in a single presentation and reduce statin dosage mitigating possible side effects and improving patient compliance

The company said that filing this patent adds a further layer of protection to its intellectual property portfolio.

Stephen O’Hara, CEO of OptiBiotix, commented: “We are pleased to announce the filing of this patent which adds a further level of protection and value to our cholesterol and blood pressure reducing product. Given the scale of the market opportunity in cardiovascular health and the limitations of existing products, combining our safe and efficacious product with existing treatments significantly broadens the commercial opportunity for OptiBiotix.

“Commercial discussions will continue with potential partners across both consumer and pharma to fully exploit the opportunity as a cholesterol and/or hypertension supplement, in isolation, or in combination with existing approaches.”