Sareum Holdings PLC
26 September 2006
For immediate release 26 September 2006
SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC
("Sareum" or the "Company")
Cancer Collaboration with Roche
Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discovery
business, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a collaborative
agreement with Roche, one of the world's leading research-oriented healthcare
groups, to provide protein structure determination capabilities to accelerate
Roche's cancer drug discovery research.
Sareum will use its skills in protein engineering and high throughput protein
structure determination to illustrate the precise nature of how Roche's
potential drug candidates interact with target receptor proteins. This detailed
structural information will support Roche's scientists in their search for new
and improved cancer therapeutics by assisting lead optimisation results and
providing co-complex structures for Roche's compounds.
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 Roche has chosen Sareum as their partner in protein
structure determination. This is a further important collaboration that Sareum
has signed with a major global pharmaceutical company and further validation
that Sareum is a partner of choice for structure-based drug discovery."
For further information please contact:
Sareum Holdings 01223 497700
Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer
Buchanan Communications 020 7466 5000
Tim Anderson, Mary-Jane Johnson
About Sareum Holdings plc
Sareum Holdings plc is a structure-based drug discovery business headquartered
in Cambridge, UK. Sareum Limited 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.
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 the protein permits
the best potential drug to be discovered. Determining structure is a complex
task and requires leading-edge equipment and experienced staff. Sareum's
approach to structure determination is to produce multiple recombinant proteins
primarily through a baculovirus expression system and to determine their
structure using x-ray crystallography.
When the structure is determined, the Company's innovative Template Screening
platform can be used to identify novel chemical starting material designed to
interact with the target protein. Sareum can then use its high-throughput
medicinal chemistry platform to rapidly optimise these 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