(Sharecast News) - Shares in intellectual property commercialisation company Frontier IP were in the green on Tuesday afternoon, following an announcement from its portfolio company, the Vaccine Group (TVG) over progress made in developing animal vaccines based on its novel technology, to tackle Covid-19.
The AIM-traded firm said two of TVG's vaccine candidates had seen success in in-vitro, pre-animal trial laboratory testing.

Following that milestone, it said TVG was now preparing to test the two vaccine candidates in animals.

Two further vaccine candidates were also under development, and TVG was investigating the longer-term potential for human vaccines.

The company said the milestone was reached within eight weeks of TVG receiving antigen protein sequences.

Frontier IP holds a 17% equity stake in TVG, which raised £0.68m in January.

Along with its international partners, it was awarded more than £9m in grant funding from the UK, United States and China governments, for work on a range of non-Covid-19 animal vaccines.

The overall progress made by TVG during the past year was likely to result in a material valuation uplift in Frontier IP's holding, in its audited results to 30 June.

Frontier IP said the book value of TVG as at 30 June 2019 was £1.6m, which was reflected in the valuation of the fundraising completed in January 2020.

"Vaccinating animals is a proven way to stop diseases from jumping one species to another and spilling over to humans," said chief executive officer Neil Crabb.

"It has taken TVG just eight weeks to reach its first major milestone in developing vaccines to combat Covid-19 in animals, and we are optimistic the company will continue to make strong progress."

At 1205 BST, shares in Frontier IP Group were up 1.61% at 63p.