Avacta Group collaborates with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Research organisation LSTM has projects and partnerships in over 70 countries and was the first institution in the world dedicated to research and teaching in tropical medicine.
As part of the collaboration, LSTM will carry out the clinical validation of the Avacta COVID-19 antigen rapid saliva test in their category 3 laboratories on patient samples.
Avacta will be given access to patient samples in Africa and South America, adding to its partnership with the UK government which allows access to patient samples in the UK.
The developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics said the higher prevalence of the disease on the African continent means that samples for prospective clinical validation studies ‘are more readily available which, if necessary, could be used to speed up the validation process.’
Shares in Avacta Group have skyrocketed over 400% since March and were trading 4.85% higher at 140.5p following this morning’s announcement.
Clinical validation evaluates the performance of a diagnostic test using real patient samples. It generates the sensitivity and specificity performance parameters which are most often used to define the performance of a diagnostic test, this morning’s statement outlined.
LSTM, which holds a £320 million research portfolio, is currently evaluating the performance of prototype lateral flow tests provided by Cytiva alongside Avacta's ELISA laboratory test using SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus samples, as a precursor to full clinical validation studies.
“It is an important partnership which provides Avacta with access to patient samples both in the UK and abroad, where the incidence of the disease is currently much higher, to ensure prompt access to a sufficient number of samples for clinical validation,” said CEO of Avacta, Dr Alistair Smith.
He added, “We have been working with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for some time to define the target performance specifications of the saliva-based rapid test and their insight has been tremendously helpful in this regard.”
Dr Lisa Baldwin, Business Development Manager of LSTM added that the partnership “exemplifies the role of the LSTM in translational work to advance products to market.”
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