Interest in flagship Optim boosts revenues at Avacta

York-based Avacta was spun out of the University of Leeds and develops technology to speed up and reduce the cost of diagnosis.

Optim allows drug developers to gain vital information about compounds using tiny samples, more cheaply and quickly than other methods.

The device, which costs between 50,000 and 100,000, can do tests simultaneously – the work of three or four instruments – in just 75 to 90 minutes.

Interest in Optim helped the group's revenues quadruple to 890,000 during the six months to the end of January.

Its operating loss increased slightly to 1.05m.

Avacta sold two Optim units during the period, with the first installed unit generating "excellent feedback".

Since January it has sold another, and has 20 leads with a good chance of orders.

Chief executive Alastair Smith said: "I am very pleased with Avacta's progress in the last six months with excellent growth in our analytical and animal health services businesses. Customer appetite for our first analytical product, Optim, which is aimed at reducing cost and risk in the drug development process, is very keen indeed, and the pipeline is strong and continually expanding.

"Although customers' capital equipment budgets are clearly tight at the present time, we look forward to a period of sustained order intake in the coming months.

"We are also responding to the pressures on customers' budgets in the global economic downturn by providing alternative purchasing models in the near term to accelerate the sales pipeline and generate the significant recurring consumables revenues that we expect."

Avacta raised 1.9m of cash in November to sustain development and sales.

Mr Smith said its new Midas product, which tests blood and serum samples, is on track for launch this year into the veterinary market. The Midas device will initially test for an unspecified dog disease, but Avacta hopes soon to expand it to diagnose diseases in cats and horses, and then to humans.

The Midas device will sell for "low thousands" of pounds, and Avacta hopes to earn recurring revenues from consumable test cartridges.

It will do tests that would normally take days or weeks in under an hour.