Abzena plc

Notification of claim

Cambridge, UK, 25 August 2017 - Abzena plc (AIM: ABZA, 'Abzena' or the 'Group'), a life sciences group providing services and technologies to enable development and manufacture of biopharmaceutical products, announces that it has been notified by attorneys acting for Stanford University (CA, USA) ('Stanford') that a complaint has been filed with the Superior Court of the State of California in the County of San Diego naming as defendants Abzena plc and its subsidiaries, Abzena Inc. and PacificGMP, in respect of claims arising with regard to certain service contracts with PacificGMP.

The principal issue of the complaint arose prior to Abzena's acquisition of PacificGMP (the 'Acquisition') in September 2015 and as referenced in the Group's Circular dated 5 April 2017, limited indemnification cover is provided by the former shareholders of PacificGMP as a portion of the acquisition consideration payable to the former PacificGMP shareholders has been held in escrow since completion of the Acquisition in order to address this issue.

Whilst the complaint claims compensatory damages of $3m, plus punitive damages, expenses and interest, the Company and its advisers currently believe that any liability, including costs associated with defending the claim, should be lower than this and expect they will be adequately covered by the funds held in escrow of approximately $1.5m. Abzena has been in negotiations with Stanford since the acquisition of PacificGMP, seeking to reach a mutually agreeable solution, but this has not been possible to date.

-Ends-

Enquiries:

Abzena plc

John Burt, Chief Executive Officer Julian Smith, Chief Financial Officer

+44 1223 903498

Numis(Abzena's Nominated Adviser and Broker)

Clare Terlouw / James Black / Paul Gillam

+44 20 7260 1000

N+1 Singer(Abzena's Joint Broker)

Aubrey Powell / Liz Yong

+44 20 7496 3000

Instinctif Partners (Abzena's PR advisors)

Melanie Toyne Sewell / Alex Shaw

+44 20 7457 2020

abzena@instinctif.com

Notes to Editors

Abzena (AIM: ABZA) provides proprietary technologies and complementary services to enable the development and manufacture of biopharmaceutical products.

The term 'ABZENA Inside' is used by Abzena to describe products that have been created using its proprietary technologies and are being developed by its partners, and include Composite Human Antibodies™ and ThioBridge™ Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs). Abzena has the potential to earn future licence fees, milestone payments and/or royalties on 'ABZENA Inside' products.

Abzena offers the following services and technologies across its principal sites in Cambridge (UK), San Diego, California (USA) and Bristol, Pennsylvania (USA):

· Immunology research studies, including immunogenicity assessment of candidate biopharmaceutical products;

· Protein engineering to create humanized antibodies and deimmunised therapeutic proteins;

· Cell line development for the manufacture of recombinant proteins and antibodies;

· Contract process development and GMP manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, including monoclonal antibodies and recombinant proteins for preclinical and clinical studies;

· Contract synthetic chemistry and bioconjugation research services, focused on antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs);

· Proprietary site-specific conjugation technologies and novel payloads for ADC development; and

· GMP manufacturer of ADC linkers, payloads & combined linker-payloads.

For more information, please seewww.abzena.com

Abzena plc published this content on 29 August 2017 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein.
Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 29 August 2017 06:17:15 UTC.

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