Sareum Holdings PLC
09 October 2006
For immediate release 9 October 2006
SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC
("Sareum" or "the Company")
Research Collaboration with PIramed Ltd
Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discovery
business, is pleased to announce today that it has entered into a significant
research collaboration with PIramed Ltd, a privately owned UK biotechnology
company, to discover novel, targeted drug therapies for the treatment of immune
inflammatory diseases.
Under the terms of this collaboration, which is scheduled to run for a period of
up to 18 months, Sareum will provide multi-disciplinary research teams with the
aim of generating novel drug lead series for further development by PIramed.
This involves the generation of novel chemical material using Template
Screening, Sareum's innovative fragment-based drug discovery technology, and
optimisation into drug leads using Sareum's automated medicinal chemistry
platform.
In return, Sareum will receive undisclosed research fees and success milestone
payments, including additional milestone payments if compounds arising out of
the collaboration advance to clinical development.
This is the third multi-disciplinary drug discovery collaboration Sareum has
signed this year. Sareum announced agreements of similar scope with Organon and
Idenix in January and February 2006.
Commenting on this announcement, Sareum's Chief Executive Officer, Dr Tim
Mitchell, said: "This major collaboration with PIramed is a further endorsement
of Sareum's leading position in structure-based drug discovery. We look forward
to successfully using our multi-disciplinary platform to deliver drug candidates
against these important disease targets."
For further information please contact:
Sareum Holdings +44 (0) 1223 497700
Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer
Buchanan Communications +44 (0) 20 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 is used to identify novel chemical starting material 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 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