Sareum Holdings PLC
10 August 2005
For immediate release 10 August 2005
SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC
("Sareum" or the "Company")
Collaboration with Leading Spanish Pharmaceutical Company
Almirall Prodesfarma S.A.
Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discovery
and services business, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a
collaborative agreement with Almirall Prodesfarma S.A. ("Almirall"), a leading
Spanish multinational pharmaceutical company, to provide protein structure
determination capabilities to accelerate drug discovery research at Almirall.
Sareum will utilise its skills in high throughput protein expression,
purification and structure determination with the aim of illustrating the
precise nature of how Almirall's potential drug candidates interact with their
target proteins. This information will assist Almirall's scientists in their
design of new and improved therapeutics against inflammatory diseases. Terms
were not disclosed.
Commenting on the agreement, Sareum's Chief Executive Officer, Dr Tim Mitchell,
said: "We are delighted that Almirall has chosen Sareum as their partner in
protein structure determination. This is a further important collaboration that
Sareum has signed since we started trading on AIM. We look forward to successful
delivery of this project to Almirall and to closing additional partnerships such
as this."
Commenting on the agreement, Almiralls's General Director for Research &
Development, Dr Jose Ma Palacios, said: "We consider protein structure
determination as an essential element in a modern drug discovery strategy, and
we have high expectations that this collaboration with Sareum will allow
Almirall to significantly leverage its drug discovery capacity."
For further information:
Sareum Holdings +44 (0)1223 497700
Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer
Buchanan Communications +44 (0)20 7466 5000
Mark Court, Mary-Jane Johnson
Ketchum SEIS (for Almirall)
Victoria Hernandez +34 91788 3200
Notes for editors:
About Sareum Holdings plc
Sareum Holdings plc is a specialist structure based drug discovery business
headquartered in Cambridge, UK. The Company was formed in August 2003 to
discover new drugs for the treatment of cancer and to provide a range of drug
discovery services to the pharmaceutical industry. Sareum's unique approach aims
to halve the time it takes to discover new drug candidates.
Structure-based drug discovery involves the determination of a disease causing
protein's three-dimensional structure. Once the structure is known, novel
chemical entities are designed to 'lock-in' to the protein with the aim of
reversing or arresting a disease's progression.
Sareum's approach to structure based drug discovery is to produce multiple
recombinant proteins primarily through a baculovirus expression system;
determine their structure using x-ray crystallography; and then use the
Company's template-molecule x-ray screening technology to identify new chemical
entities designed to interact with the target protein. Sareum then uses its
high-throughput medicinal chemistry platform to rapidly synthesise further
molecules and develop the most promising into potential drug candidates.
Sareum offers its accelerated drug discovery capabilities on a fee basis to the
pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and also intends to license out any
internally generated drug candidates at the Phase I or Phase II clinical trials
stage.
Sareum joined the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in October 2004 and
trades under the symbol SAR. For further information, please visit
www.sareum.co.uk
About Almirall
Almirall, a leading company committed to health, is a consolidated international
pharmaceutical company that researches, develops and commercialises drugs from
its own R&D, as well as licensed drugs, with the aim of improving health and
quality of life.
Almirall focuses its drug discovery resources in therapeutic areas related to
the treatment of asthma, COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), psoriasis
and rheumatoid arthritis.
Almirall will be investing 500 million euros in R&D over the next five years.
This is the largest investment in this area by a Spanish pharmaceutical company.
Forecasts for total sales in 2005 amount to 946 million euros.
Almirall, whose headquarters are in Barcelona (Spain), has a staff of over 3,200
people, approximately 500 of whom form part of the R&D team. Almirall currently
has a presence in more than 100 countries with its own products and products
licensed from other prestigious companies. The company is strengthening its
direct presence in Europe and Latin America via affiliates.
For more information you can visit the website: http://www.almirall.es
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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