LONDON: Open Orphan plc (ORPH), announced a new £4.3 million contract to conduct a human viral challenge study utilising one of its 8 traditional challenge study models for another of the global top 10 vaccine companies.
This trial will be conducted in the Company’s dedicated human viral challenge quarantine unit in London with all volunteers recruited through hVIVO’s volunteer recruitment. The hVIVO unit is Europe’s only commercial 24-bedroom quarantine clinic with on-site virology laboratory.
Work on this major new contract has started already and the contract is expected to be delivered in Q1 2021 with the majority of revenues being generated in H1 2021. It is a further example of Open Orphan delivering on its pipeline and stated strategy of winning sizeable contracts.
The Company’s Interim Results will be published on the morning of Wednesday the 30th of September 2020, analyst conference call scheduled for 10.30am on the 30th of September.
Cathal Friel, Executive Chairman, Open Orphan, said: “Open Orphan continues to execute on its substantial pipeline that has been built up by the expertise and experience of our professional and hardworking teams in hVIVO and Venn Life Sciences. We are focused on continuing to deliver large and profitable contracts which demonstrate hVIVO’s position as the world leader in the testing of vaccines and antivirals using human challenge clinical trials.
“Our stated objectives when we acquired hVIVO in January of this year was to increase its 24-bedroom quarantine clinic annual utilisation from its traditional 20-25% utilisation up to maximum capacity and to build out a clear pipeline of signed contracts going forward. With this contract, we are close to having the hVIVO quarantine clinic block booked with our conventional challenge studies until December 2021. Within a month or two we are likely to have our quarantine clinic block booked out for the next 18 months to two years with conventional challenge study contracts.
“I am hugely excited by the progress we are making as a Group since our IPO in 2019 and I look forward to continuing to update shareholders on the work we are doing over the coming months.”
As announced in early March, Open Orphan is rapidly advancing a number of Coronavirus challenge study models and expects to be helping many COVID-19 vaccine development companies to test their vaccines. No other company in the world has such a portfolio, with only two competitors globally having 1 challenge study model each. hVIVO also works with companies in the UK and Ireland to provide COVID-19 testing to staff to protect staff and customers from a workplace COVID-19 outbreak through its COVID Clear offering.
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