Open Orphan plc

("Open Orphan" or the "Company")

£1.5m Contract renewal for Venn Life Sciences with a major global pharmaceutical client

Open Orphan plc (AIM: ORPH), a rapidly growing specialist contract research organisation (CRO) and world leader in vaccine and antiviral testing using human challenge clinical trials, announces that Venn Life Sciences ("Venn"), a subsidiary of Open Orphan, has signed a contract renewal with a major global pharmaceutical client worth £1.5m over two years.

The renewed contract will commence in January 2022, with the Venn team in Breda providing dedicated clinical pharmacokinetics ('PK') support to this leading global pharmaceutical client on an array of drug development programmes, to study the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of drugs within the body.

Venn, which has been a part of Open Orphan since 2019, offers a combination of drug development consultancy, clinical trial design and execution. These combined services enable Venn to provide its clients with a complete end-to-end service on all the stages of their drug development programmes, from the early planning phase to final execution. Venn has offices in Breda (Netherlands) and Paris (France).

Cathal Friel, Executive Chairman of Open Orphan, said: "We are delighted to see this contract renewal signed by the Venn team in Breda with a client that it has been working with since 2012. The continued support by Venn to a distinguished partner such as this demonstrates the value of Venn's clinical pharmacokinetics offering, as part of its comprehensive offering in drug development consultancy, clinical trial design and execution.

"Open Orphan's strengths lie in the established relationships we have with our pharmaceutical partners and we expect to continue to develop these relationships as well as focusing on converting our existing pipeline of new business opportunities."  

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 (as implemented into English law) ("MAR"). With the publication of this announcement via a Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.

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Notes to Editors

Open Orphan plc

Open Orphan plc (London and Euronext: ORPH) is a rapidly growing pharmaceutical service/contract research company that is a world leader in testing vaccines and antivirals using human challenge clinical trials. The Company provides services to Big Pharma, biotech and government/public health organisations.

Open Orphan runs challenge studies in London from both its 19-bedroom Whitechapel quarantine clinic and its state-of-the-art 24-bedroom QMB clinic with its highly specialised on-site virology and immunology laboratory. Open Orphan has a leading portfolio of human challenge study models for infectious and respiratory diseases and is developing a number of other models. There has been an explosion in the growth of the infectious disease pharmaceuticals market, which is estimated to grow to in excess of $250bn by 2025. The Group is focused on refreshing its existing challenge models and develop new models, such as Malaria, to address the dramatic growth potential of the global infectious disease market.

Building upon its many years of challenge studies and virology research, the Company is developing an in-depth database of infectious disease progression data. Based on the Company's Disease in Motion® platform, this unique dataset includes clinical, immunological, virological and digital (wearable) biomarkers. The Disease in Motion platform has many potential applications across a wide variety of end users including big technology, wearables, pharma and biotech companies.

Open Orphan's Paris office has been providing biometry, data management and statistics to its many European pharmaceutical clients for over 20 years. For over 15 years, the Company's Netherlands office has been providing drug development consultancy and services, including CMC (chemistry, manufacturing and controls), PK and medical writing, to a broad range of European clients. Both offices are now also fully integrated with the London office and working on challenge study contracts as well as supporting third party trial contracts.