Sareum Holdings PLC
15 May 2007
For immediate release 15 May 2007
SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC
("Sareum" or "the Company")
Advancement of Internal Cancer Drug Discovery Program
Sareum Holdings plc (Sareum) (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug
discovery business, is pleased to announce that it has developed, and filed
patent applications on, novel small molecule compounds which show promising
activity against two significant cancer drug discovery target types.
These targets are the Aurora and FLT kinases, believed to be key to the
regulation of cell division and proliferation, which control different stages in
the development of a tumour. It is believed that a drug simultaneously able to
inhibit the function of both targets will be more effective against cancer than
an inhibitor that acts on a single target. The associated patent filings are
part of the Company's strategy to secure the intellectual property rights
relating to the novel compound series developed from this program and their use
in the treatment of cancer.
Sareum has used its expertise in fragment and structure-based drug discovery to
identify novel chemical compounds effective against these cancer drug targets.
These compounds have been rapidly progressed towards drug candidates utilising
Sareum's high throughput medicinal chemistry and structure determination
platforms. Additionally, key assets, including the determination of a hitherto
un-reported Aurora kinase sub-type structure, have been developed by scientists
at Sareum.
This program is currently wholly owned by Sareum and forms a key part of the
Company's internal oncology portfolio, which also includes the Checkpoint Kinase
program announced in February 2007.
Commenting on the announcement, Sareum's Chief Executive Officer, Dr Tim
Mitchell, said: "The progress of these compounds represents a further milestone
in Sareum's strategy to generate value through our in-house drug discovery. We
are actively seeking licencing partners for this program to assist the
advancement of these novel chemical series through to clinical candidate
nomination."
Sareum Holdings plc 01223 497700
Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer
Buchanan Communications 020 7466 5000
Tim Anderson, Mary-Jane Johnson
Grant Thornton Corporate Finance 020 7383 5100
Philip Secrett, Colin Aaronson
Notes for editors:
About Aurora Kinases
Aurora kinases have been implicated in the onset of several human cancers. They
are over-expressed in different tumour types including colon, breast and
pancreatic cancers as well as in leukemias. Aurora kinases are involved in
regulating multiple steps of mitosis (the process by which a copy of the
duplicated genome is precisely segregated into two daughter cells), including
centrosome duplication, formation of a bipolar mitotic spindle, chromosome
alignment on the mitotic spindle and regulation of the fidelity-monitoring
spindle checkpoint.
About FLT Kinases
The FLT kinases have been demonstrated to be important in many stages of tumour
development. For instance, FLT-1 has been linked to tumour angiogenesis, a
duplication of the FLT-3 gene is seen in many leukemia patients and FLT-4 is
associated with metastases of tumours, which are the main cause of death in
cancer patients.
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. Sareum's unique approach aims to halve the time it
takes to discover new drug candidates.
A structure-based approach to drug discovery relies on knowledge of the
three-dimensional structure of the proteins that cause disease. Once the
structure is known, potential drugs are designed to 'lock-in' to the protein
with the aim of reversing or arresting a disease's progression. Knowledge of
the structure of the potential drugs and how they 'lock-in' to their target
protein assists greatly in the development of high-quality drug candidates.
Determining structure is a complex task and requires leading-edge equipment and
experienced staff. Sareum's approach to structure determination utilises its
proprietary protein expression platform in order to produce multiple recombinant
proteins that accelerate structure determination using x-ray crystallography.
Once the structure is determined, the Company's innovative fragment screening
platform is used to identify novel chemical templates designed to interact with
the target protein. Sareum then uses its high-throughput medicinal chemistry
platform to rapidly optimise these molecules and develop the most promising into
potential drug candidates.
Sareum aims to successfully deliver drug candidates for licensing to larger
pharmaceutical companies at the pre-clinical or early clinical trials stage.
This is funded by provision of its specialist drug discovery capabilities to
partners in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
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
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange