New Cancer Collaboration

Sareum Holdings PLC 06 December 2004 For Immediate Release 6 December 2004 SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC ("Sareum" or the "Company") Sareum Announces Collaboration with Cancer Research Technology Limited Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the structure-based drug discovery and services business, is pleased to announce it has entered into a collaborative agreement with Cancer Research Technology Limited (CRT), the oncology focused technology transfer and development company. Under the terms of the agreement, which is on a fee-for-service basis and is for 6 months' duration, Sareum will provide computational chemistry expertise to support several of CRT's therapeutic discovery programmes in cancer. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Commenting on the announcement, Sareum's Chief Executive Officer, Dr Tim Mitchell, said: "We are delighted that we have been chosen by Cancer Research Technology to provide these drug discovery services and we look forward to making a valuable contribution to their development programmes." Commenting on the announcement, CRT's Head of Medicinal Chemistry, Dr Tony Raynham, said: "Importantly, Sareum's core capabilities in computational chemistry will support CRT's medicinal chemistry department in the development of drug candidates arising from the research activities of our parent charity Cancer Research UK and our other prestigious international partners." For further information: Sareum Holdings 01223 497700 Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer Cancer Research Technology Limited 0207 679 6728 Tony Raynham, Head of Medicinal Chemistry Buchanan Communications 020 7466 5000 Mark Court, Mary-Jane Johnson Notes for editors: About Sareum Holdings plc Sareum Holdings plc is a 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 inflammation 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 computational chemistry expertise to create virtual, focused libraries of new chemical entities designed to interact with the target protein. Sareum then uses its high-throughput medicinal chemistry platform to rapidly synthesise these 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 has recently signed collaborative agreements with Inpharmatica Ltd. and Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Sareum also intends to license out any internally generated drug candidates at the Phase I or Phase II clinical trials stage. Sareum joined the Alternative Investment 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 Cancer Research Technology Limited Cancer Research Technology Limited (CRT) is a specialist technology transfer company which aims to develop new discoveries in cancer research for the benefit of cancer patients. CRT is wholly owned by Cancer Research UK, the largest independent funder of cancer research in the world. CRT works closely with leading international cancer scientists and their institutes to protect intellectual property arising from their research and to establish links with commercial partners. CRT facilitates the discovery, development and marketing of new cancer therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostics and enabling technologies. Further information about CRT can be found at www.cancertechnology.co.uk. Cancer Research UK is Europe's leading cancer charity, dedicated to research into the causes, prevention and treatment of cancer. The charity supports the work of 3,000 scientists, doctors and nurses in over 80 academic centres across the UK, with an annual scientific spend of more than £213 million. Further information about Cancer Research UK can be found at www.cancerresearchuk.org. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange