Drug developer Avacta eyes commercial launch of rapid coronavirus test

The Wetherby-based said it had made significant progress in both its diagnostics and therapeutics divisions during 2020 and that has enabled it to deliver major value inflection points during the first weeks of 2021.

Dr Alastair Smith, CEO of Avacta, said: "We are very excited by the commercial potential of our scalable, rapid coronavirus test. The recently announced clinical data strongly reflects the excellent analytical performance demonstrated in the lab and suggests that it may be, to date, the most sensitive S1 spike protein lateral flow test.

"We are now confidently proceeding into full clinical validation to support a CE Mark, with a potential commercial launch for professional use around the end of the first quarter of this year.

"Despite unprecedented pressures on the diagnostics division, we now have in place the infrastructure to support the commercial launch of this test. Importantly, we are close to completing the establishment of a complex supply chain for the scalable manufacture of the test kits and we are making timely progress in instituting a quality management system to support the required ISO13485 accreditation for medical devices.

"In line with commitments we made during the fund raise last summer, in the therapeutics division we expanded our in-house pre-clinical pipeline and also kept our partnered programmes moving forwards, despite the restrictions of Covid-19 safe-working.

"In December, we submitted a Clinical Trial Authorisation (CTA) to the UK's MHRA for our lead pre|CISION platform drug candidate, AVA6000 Pro-doxorubicin, and I am delighted that we recently received approval from the agency to proceed with the phase one study, which we expect will dose first patient around the middle of the year.

"I am very proud of the Avacta team and how they have overcome the substantial challenges presented by the pandemic and continued to progress programmes and generate significant shareholder value. I look forward to updating the market on the very exciting milestones ahead of us in due course."

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James Mitchinson