Shares in cancer therapies and diagnostics company Avacta (AVCT:AIM) sank 30% to 81.4p after it said laboratory analysis showed its proprietary lateral flow test was less effective at detecting lower viral loads of the Omicron variant.
Today’s announcement also knocked the shares of leading lateral flow test manufacturer and developer Abingdon Health (ABDX:AIM) which was scaling up the manufacture of Avacta’s product, resulting in its shares dropping 19% to 23.2p.
Avacta was keen to emphasise that the proprietary reagent used in the lateral flow test was just as sensitive in detecting the virus as the delta variant and it is the performance of the third party provided antibody used in the test that has been affected by the Omicron variant.
Consequently, Avacta has taken the decision to pause sales of its lateral flow test while it works with Abingdon Health to replace the antibody and create a new specification. This is academic from a commercial perspective because the test has been on the shelf awaiting authorization under new regulations which came into force in October 2021.
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Chief executive Alastair Smith commented: ‘Our determination to only provide high quality, high performance diagnostic tests has led us to the correct decision to pause all marketing of the AffiDX® lateral flow antigen test.’
‘We believe COVID-19 testing remains a long-term commercial opportunity. We will therefore use the robustness of the Affimer® platform, and what we have learned about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, to generate the next generation antigen test that will be as resilient as possible to any future mutations.’
Avacta noted that all rapid antigen tests had come ‘under scrutiny’ after several mutations were associated with the Omicron variant.
On 15 December the company reported that its test was just as effective at identifying high viral loads, but the sensitivity of the test was reduced at lower viral loads compared with previous variants.
Sensitivity measures how accurately a test correctly identifies someone who has the disease.
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