Abzena : Exercise of options

Abzena plc

Exercise of options

Cambridge, UK, 10 October 2018 - Abzena plc (AIM: ABZA, 'Abzena', the 'Company' or the 'Group') announces that, on 10 October 2018, 672,980 new ordinary shares of £0.002 each in the Company ('Ordinary Shares') were issued and allotted following the exercise of share options by employees and former employees. The new Ordinary Shares rank pari passuwith the Company's existing issued Ordinary Shares and have been admitted to trading on AIM under the Company's block admission.

Total voting rights

Following the issue of the 672,980 new Ordinary Shares as set out above, the Company's issued share capital comprises 214,893,379 Ordinary Shares with voting rights. No Ordinary Shares are held in treasury. The total number of voting rights in the Company is therefore 214,893,379. This figure of 214,893,379 Ordinary Shares may be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change in their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the FCA's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.

Director	New Ordinary Shares resulting from option exercises	Direct and indirect interest in Ordinary Shares1	% of issued share capital1
John Burt	151,673	2,302,238	1.1%
Julian Smith	83,253	608,672	0.3%

¹ As enlarged by the issue of 672,980 new Ordinary Shares pursuant to the option exercise.

Notification and public disclosure of transactions by persons discharging managerial responsibilities and persons closely associated with them

1 Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associate

1(a)	Name	John Burt
1(b)	Position / Status	Chief Executive Officer

2 Reason for the Notification

2(a)	Reason	Exercise of Stock Options
2(b)	Initial notification / amendment	Initial

3 Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor

3(a)	Name	Abzena plc
3(b)	Legal Entity Identifier ('LEI')	213800SB5JV4O28JRM14

4 Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; and (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted

4(a)	Description of the financial instrument, type of instrument	Abzena plc ordinary shares of £0.002 each
	Identification code	GB00BN65QN46
4(b)	Nature of transaction	Exercise of 151,673 stock options
4(c)	Price(s) and volumes(s)	Price	Volume
		£0.0002 (exercise price)	151,673
4(d)	Aggregated information	Price	Volume
		£0.0002 (exercise price)	151,673
4(e)	Date of transaction	10 October 2018
4(f)	Place of the transaction	N/a

Notification and public disclosure of transactions by persons discharging managerial responsibilities and persons closely associated with them

1 Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associate

1(a)	Name	Julian Smith
1(b)	Position / Status	Director

2 Reason for the Notification

2(a)	Reason	Exercise of Stock Options
2(b)	Initial notification / amendment	Initial

3 Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor

3(a)	Name	Abzena plc
3(b)	Legal Entity Identifier ('LEI')	213800SB5JV4O28JRM14

4 Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; and (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted

4(a)	Description of the financial instrument, type of instrument	Abzena plc ordinary shares of £0.002 each
	Identification code	GB00BN65QN46
4(b)	Nature of transaction	Exercise of 83,253 stock options
4(c)	Price(s) and volumes(s)	Price	Volume
		£0.0002 (exercise price)	83,253
4(d)	Aggregated information	Price	Volume
		£0.0002 (exercise price)	83,253
4(e)	Date of transaction	10 October 2018
4(f)	Place of the transaction	N/a

-Ends-

Enquiries:

Abzena plc John Burt, Chief Executive Officer	[phone]
N+1 Singer(Nomad & Broker) Aubrey Powell / Ben Farrow	[phone]
Instinctif Partners Melanie Toyne Sewell / Rozi Morris / Alex Shaw	[phone] [e-mail]

Notes to Editors

About Abzena

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

The term 'ABZENAInside' 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 ABZENAInside products.

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

· Biology research studies, including immunogenicity assessment of candidate biopharmaceutical products and bioassay development;

· 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;

· GMP manufacturing of ADC linkers, payloads & combined linker-payloads; and

· GMP analytical services for biopharmaceutical manufacturing projects.

For more information, please see www.abzena.com.