Aptamer Group PLC on Friday said, after a ‘difficult’ 12 months, it has signed four new contacts in the last three weeks amounting up to £507,000 over the next six months.

Aptamer is a York-based provider of Optimer binders for use in therapeutics, diagnostics, bioprocessing and research. Shares in the firm surged 29% to 5.49 pence on Friday morning in London.

The company said the contracts represent an ‘important’ early contribution towards reaching the company’s revenue targets for the year ending June 30, 2024.

Aptamer noted that the contracts were included the pipeline set out in a trading update released on Tuesday.

The first contract is with an unnamed ‘top ten’ pharmaceutical company that requires Optimer binders to support a bioprocessing application.

The second contract is to support an unnamed US-based gene therapy company with Optimer binders to a key target in neurodegenerative disease.

The third contract is with an unnamed US-based genetic medicine company to generate Optimer binders for two viral targets.

The final contract signed is a follow-on deal with an unnamed US-based vaccine development company. As part of the new agreement, Aptamer will develop Optimer binders to viral targets to improve the selectivity and enable multiplex analysis in quality control assays.

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