Sareum Holdings PLC
27 October 2005
For immediate release 27 October 2005
SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC
("Sareum" or the "Company")
Sareum Announces Collaboration with Schering AG
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 Schering AG, Germany (FSE: SCH, NYSE: SHR), a
global research-based pharmaceutical company with sales in excess of $6 Billion
in 2004. The aim of the collaboration is for Sareum to provide protein structure
determination capabilities to accelerate drug discovery research at Schering.
Sareum will utilise its expertise in high throughput protein expression,
purification and structure determination to demonstrate how Schering's potential
drug candidates interact with their target protein receptor. In return, Sareum
will receive research fees and success milestone payments.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Commenting on the agreement, Sareum's Chief Executive Officer, Dr Tim Mitchell,
said: "We are delighted that Schering has chosen Sareum as their partner in
protein structure determination. This is a further important collaboration that
Sareum has signed with a major international pharmaceutical company. Revenues
generated in collaborations such as this are valuable sources of financial
support for our in-house cancer research programs. We look forward to successful
delivery of this project to Schering and to closing additional partnerships such
as this."
For further information:
Sareum Contacts
Sareum Holdings 01223 497700
Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer
Buchanan Communications 020 7466 5000
Tim Anderson, Mary-Jane Johnson
Notes for editors:
About Sareum Holdings plc
Sareum Holdings plc is a specialist structure based drug discovery and services
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 its
innovative 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 provides its specialist drug discovery capabilities to partners in the
pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The Company aims to successfully
deliver: Programmes for complete gene-to-candidate structure-based discovery;
projects to accelerate or improve the productivity of specific activities; and
drug candidates for licensing 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
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange