Avacta to raise £48 million to accelerate development of therapies

5th June 2020

Corporate lawyers at Walker Morris have advised quoted life sciences company, Avacta Group plc (AVCT) – the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and reagents, on its fundraising to raise, in aggregate, £48 million.

The Placing, which is accompanied by a separate subscription direct with the Company and offers utilising the PrimaryBid platform (to allow retail investors a chance to participate), will to provide working capital to fund the rapid scale-up of the broader Affimer^® diagnostic products opportunities including COVID-19 antigen rapid testing and accelerated expansion of the in-house Affimer^® and pre|CISION™ cancer therapy pipeline.

Corporate Partner Richard Naish led the Walker Morris team, supported by Frances Scarisbrick.

The Placing follows the recent announcement that Walker Morris lawyers advised Avacta on its exclusive agreement with Medusa19 Limited for direct-to-consumer sales of a saliva-based rapid test for the COVID-19 antigen.

Wetherby based Avacta has partnered with Cytiva to develop the innovative new antigen test to indicate whether individuals are infected with COVID-19, providing results within minutes.