Welcome to our first Avecia Biologics e-newsletter Through this quarterly bulletin we wish to keep in touch with you by delivering information on our services, advising you of upcoming conferences we are attending, special announcements and so on.   We hope you will enjoy our e-newsletter, but do of course respect your privacy.  If you wish to unsubscribe from further issues of this newsletter, please click this link to opt-out.

Avecia celebrates 10 years of cGMP manufacture This month Avecia Biologics turned 10 years old as a Contract Development and Manufacturing organisation.  As we reflect on the past 10 years, we thank you for your support in helping us become a leader in the process development and manufacture of biologics.  In this time we have developed more than 50 different microbial biologics using our proprietary expression and gene manipulation systems, including our award-winning pAVEway™ advanced protein expression technology.  We look forward to many more years of continued growth in this area.  Click here to read press release.

Avecia launches Antibody Fragment Toolkit Bo Kara, Director of Science & Technology, presented "Tools for the Effective Development & Manufacture of Antibody Fragments" at the recent BioJapan 2008 held in Yokohama City.   In recent years there has been a very significant rise in the number and importance of monoclonal antibodies in the global pharmaceutical development pipeline. This is now being followed by a rapid increase in the number of antibody fragments and related types of binding molecules entering preclinical and clinical testing. This phenomenon is being driven in part by the recognition that such molecules can be derived from biopharmaceutical discovery platforms which make huge numbers of antibody derived materials available for screening and testing. Click to read more.

pAVEway™ Keeps on Winning! Avecia is pleased to announce that its pAVEway™ technology won the "Innovation Award" category at the CELS Business for Life Awards event held 4th December in Newcastle, UK.  The Business for Life Awards are a key factor in cultivating future business achievements in the healthcare sector throughout the north east region of the UK.  On presenting the Award Sir Peter Barr, Chair of NHS Innovations North, indicated that they had selected technology that will have a significant impact on the patient well being in the future.  Avecia will now go on to represent north east England in the Medilink National Awards in early 2009