Avacta seals breakthrough deal to hit South East Asia market

DIAGNOSTICS specialist Avacta has struck a deal to target the booming biotech market of South East Asia with its flagship Optim device.

The Wetherby-based company, spun out of the University of Leeds in 2004, said its US distributor Pall Corporation will also sell the drug analysis device in countries including South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Singapore, home to Pall’s Centre of Excellence, will also act as a central hub for sales to Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

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Avacta’s Optim device is designed to speed up and reduce the cost of drug development. It claims to deliver vital information tens times faster than other approaches using much smaller samples.

Avacta said South East Asia’s biopharma market is “set for growth”, with Singapore and South Korea emerging as hotspots.

“The prospects for the South Korean bio-industry also look very promising due to strong government support and investments by international and regional businesses,” said the company.

The latest tie-up follows Avacta’s “transformational” deal with Pall Corporation earlier this year, allowing the technology giant to market its products and services in the US and Canada.

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Avacta added Pall is making “good progress” on sales and marketing of Optim in North America.

Chief executive Alastair Smith said: “We are delighted to expand our collaboration with Pall further and to benefit from their expertise and resources in the South East Asian market. We are very pleased with the progress that Pall are making with Optim sales and marketing in North America and expect to see the same sort of progress in this new territory.

“The strengthening of our commercial partnership with Pall through the development of a joint analytical services offering, that was recently announced, and potential to develop new products together is very important to Avacta and we anticipate that this will provide a strong platform for growth in this area of the group’s activities.”

Avacta is due to report annual results later this month and recently said 14 of its Optim systems have been ordered during the year to the end of July.

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The company added it already has orders for the new financial year plus an “encouraging pipeline of high-quality sales leads in place”.

Ken Frank, senior vice president of Pall Corporation and president of Pall’s biopharmaceutical division, said: “The extension of our collaboration with Avacta in South East Asia complements our investments in this area and significantly furthers our capability to provide high value, differentiated solutions to the developers and manufacturers of biomolecules for global healthcare needs.”

Avacta also has a distribution deal with DKSH Japan to distribute Optim in Japan. The country is the second largest biotechnology market after the US with over 500 bioventures, and is expected to grow ten times in volume by 2017.

The company moved to its new manufacturing facility in Thorp Arch in Wetherby earlier this year to equip it for a pick-up in sales.

It floated on the Alternative Investment Market in 2006.

Spinout’s drug trial success

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A UNIVERSITY of Leeds spin-out which develops light-sensitive drugs is considering a sale or partnership after a successful clinical trial of its therapy.

The company said it has appointed Pricewaterhouse-Coopers as an adviser to look for potential co-developers or acquirers. Photopharmica yesterday reported positive results from its Phase 2b trial of antimicrobial photodynamic therapy.

Its PPA 904 therapy was shown to produce a “substantial and significant reduction” in bacteria in chronic leg ulcers, achieving statistical significance.

The trial, done at 11 centres across the UK, found that significantly fewer patients treated with PPA 904 experienced very high bacteria levels than placebo-treated patients.

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Photodynamic compounds, called photosensitisers, destroy or inhibit the growth of living cells when exposed to light.

Photopharmica is 49.9 per cent owned by IP Group, which commercialises university research.

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