LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Fusion Antibodies reported a narrower first-half loss on Monday, as increased investment in its OptiMAL antibody discovery platform and a series of new contract wins helped improve performance despite lower year-on-year revenue.
The AIM-traded company said it had made "substantial progress" toward the commercial launch of OptiMAL, which remains on track for mid-December.

Revenue for the six months ended 30 September fell to £0.84m from £1.2m a year earlier but improved from £0.76m in the second half of the 2025 financial year.

Research and development spending rose to £0.35m from £0.18m as the group advanced validation work on OptiMAL in partnership with the US National Cancer Institute.

Fusion cut its interim loss by 32% to £0.51m, and ended the period with £0.25m in cash, supported by £0.54m owed by existing debtors.

The firm said its cash position had improved further by 21 November.

Operational progress centred on OptiMAL, with the US granting a patent covering the design and method of its Opti-library.

Fusion said the NCI validation project delivered hits against all three selected targets, including antibodies with "very high affinity" in the single-digit nanomolar range.

It added that the NCI intended to continue using the platform, and that it expected to secure an agreement allowing this following the end of the US government shutdown.

Chief executive Adrian Kinkaid said the validation work had demonstrated both the performance of OptiMAL and its transferability to external laboratories, supporting the potential for a scalable, licensing-led business model.

"The company has made substantial progress towards its core strategic objective of developing OptiMAL in readiness for a commercial launch of the technology," he said.

"During the validation project, run with the NCI, the platform consistently generated high quality antibodies against a range of targets and exceeded our expectations in terms of affinities achieved, especially against peptide targets.

"Crucially, the ultimate proof of validation is that the NCI themselves wish to continue using OptiMAL as a front-line means of identifying human antibodies against a wide range of targets for years to come.

"Now that the US government shutdown has been brought to an end, we expect to be making progress in securing an agreement which allows the NCI to continue to use OptiMAL."

Kinkaid added that the success of the project "signalled the potential for a highly scalable, and profitable, licensing-based business model," positioning the group to generate greater long-term value beyond its custom services.

He added that industry conferences had produced multiple expressions of interest from prospective clients and that demand for mammalian display applications could extend OptiMAL's use into AI-designed and non-human libraries.

Fusion also secured several new contracts during the period, including cell-line development work and two humanisation projects for specialist divisions of large pharmaceutical companies.

Kinkaid said the company had seen "very encouraging 'wins'" despite challenging geopolitical and economic conditions that had slowed client funding.

"Whilst the recognised revenue for this period is down against the corresponding figure for the first half of 2025, it has increased against the immediately preceding six months and reflects improving performance by the company as well as being suggestive of a recovering market, one which Fusion is increasingly well placed to exploit," he said.

Fusion said it would formally launch OptiMAL at the Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics conference in San Diego on 15-17 December, and said initial pipeline opportunities for the platform and mammalian display technology were worth around £1m.

At 1157 GMT, shares in Fusion Antibodies were up 1.5% at 12.18p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.

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