Avacta Group inks manufacturing agreement with Abingdon Health
has inked an agreement with Abingdon Health to manufacture its rapid SARS-CoV-2 antigen saliva test in an effort to expand its manufacturing capacity.
The developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and reagents is already in partnership Cytiva for use with patient saliva that aims to provide a result in a few minutes, indicating whether the patient is currently infected with coronavirus.
The test has the potential to be used for frequent mass testing ‘in order to identify infectious individuals so that they can be isolated and treated, thereby reducing the spread of infection.’
Abingdon Health holds Europe's largest lateral flow test contract manufacturing capacity. Its two sites in York and Doncaster, UK are able to produce millions of rapid tests per month.
Avacta will transfer its technology to Abingdon Health with the aim of manufacturing an equivalent antigen test which doesn’t require further clinical or regulatory approvals.
The agreement with Abingdon Health will also provide future additional manufacturing capacity that could increase to several millions of tests per month, Avacta told investors this morning.
Avacta also recently inked a manufacturing partnership with BBI Solutions to develop and validate a scaled-up manufacturing process for the saliva-based rapid antigen test.
Avacta will begin the test’s clinical validation as soon as possible using the first pilot batches.
Shares in Avacta Group have skyrocketed over 400% since March and closed at 158p on Tuesday afternoon.
“The Affimer reagents that we have generated are very specific to SARS-CoV-2 antigen and we are confident of meeting and exceeding the clinical performance requirements for identifying the most infectious people,” said Dr. Alastair Smith, CEO of Avacta Group.
He added, “Manufacturing capacity is therefore the key challenge that has to be met in achieving widespread roll-out of Avacta's saliva-based rapid antigen test. We therefore continue to actively seek additional manufacturing partners globally to be able to provide the volume of tests that will be required in the UK and elsewhere.”
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