OREANDA-NEWS. July 16, 2015. IP Group plc (LSE: IPO) ("IP Group" or "the Group"), the developer of intellectual property-based businesses, is pleased to note that portfolio company Avacta Group plc ("Avacta" or the "Company"), the global provider of proprietary diagnostics tools, consumables and reagents for life sciences, has raised, subject to certain conditions, up to 22.0m (before expenses) by way of a placing of new Ordinary Shares with both new and existing shareholders at a price of 1.25 pence per share.

Avacta has developed proprietary affinity reagents - "Affimers" - which are an engineered alternative to antibodies. Affimers are small, simple, robust proteins that can be generated on short timescales, manufactured reproducibly, have high specificity and, as the Affimer generation process does not use animals, the possible range of targets is not limited by an animal's immune response. These characteristics address many of the currently understood performance limiting factors of antibodies which, the directors of the Company believe, provide a significant opportunity to offer a superior alternative in many applications across the life sciences markets.

The net proceeds of the placing will be used to accelerate Avacta's development of the Affimer technology as a bio-therapeutic platform, to continue the development of the Group's current therapeutic Affimer assets, to initiate several more in-house pre-clinical drug development programmes and to develop a small range of platform technologies for half-life extension, targeting and combination therapies. This activity will be incremental to the ongoing development and commercialisation of Affimers as research reagents and for diagnostics.

The placing is conditional upon, inter alia, the relevant conditions in the Placing Agreement being satisfied or (if applicable) waived and the passing of a special resolution at a general meeting of the Company. Subject to shareholder approval being given as aforementioned, it is expected that admission to AIM will become effective in respect of, and that dealings on AIM will commence in, the placing shares on or around 3 August 2015.

IP Group has agreed to subscribe for 240,000,000 placing shares, representing ?3.0 million. Following the completion of the placing, IP Group will be beneficially interested in 1,577,296,980 ordinary shares in the Company, representing approximately 23.4% of the enlarged issued share capital.

Commenting on the placing, Alan Aubrey, Chief Executive of IP Group, said: "This fundraising will allow Avacta to build on its success in developing Affimers as an alternative to antibodies that can potentially overcome many of the latter's limitations. We look forward to continuing to support the Company as it further explores and develops this versatile and differentiated platform."

Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Avacta, commented: "We have made excellent progress in demonstrating the potential of the Affimer technology as a bio-therapeutic platform to rival antibodies. We believe our proprietary Affimer technology has significant competitive advantages that address the limitations of antibodies and other non-antibody protein scaffolds which suggests that they have the potential to become a leading alternative bio-therapeutic platform. This fundraising will allow us to resource the development of Affimers as therapeutics, in addition to the ongoing development and commercialisation of Affimers as research reagents, and we thank our existing investors for their continuing support and welcome a number of new investors."