Sareum Regulatory News (SAR)

22 Sep 2005 07:00

Sareum Holdings PLC22 September 2005 For immediate release 22 September 2005 SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC ("Sareum" or the "Company") Collaboration with Infinity Pharmaceuticals Inc Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discoveryand services business, is pleased to announce that it has entered into acollaborative agreement with Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Infinity), a cancerdrug discovery company based in Cambridge, Mass. USA, to provide proteinstructure determination capabilities to accelerate Infinity's drug discoveryresearch. Sareum will utilise its skills in high throughput protein expression,purification and structure determination to illustrate the precise nature of howInfinity's potential drug candidates interact with target receptor proteins.This detailed structural information will assist Infinity's scientists in theirsearch for new and improved cancer therapeutics by driving lead optimizationresults and providing co-complex structures for Infinity's compounds. Financialterms of the agreement were not disclosed. "We are delighted that Infinity has chosen Sareum as their partner in proteinstructure determination," commented Dr. Tim Mitchell, Sareum's Chief ExecutiveOfficer. "This is our first protein structure determination collaboration inthe United States and a significant first step into a very important market. Welook forward to successful delivery of this project to Infinity and to closingadditional partnerships such as this." Dr. Julian Adams, Infinity's Chief Scientific Officer remarked: "Sareum'sprotein structure determination technologies and expertise will enhanceInfinity's ability to design better, more robust molecules for the creation ofnew cancer treatments. This partnership further illustrates Infinity'scommitment to accelerate the discovery of novel therapeutics for patientssuffering from cancer." For further information please contact: Sareum Holdings 01223 497700Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer Buchanan Communications 020 7466 5000Tim Anderson, Mary-Jane Johnson Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc.Adelene Perkins, Chief Business Officer 617.453.1000 About Sareum Holdings plc Sareum Holdings plc is a specialist structure based drug discovery and servicesbusiness headquartered in Cambridge, UK. The Company was formed in August 2003to discover new drugs for the treatment of cancer and to provide a range of drugdiscovery services to the pharmaceutical industry. Sareum's unique approach aimsto halve the time it takes to discover new drug candidates. Structure-based drug discovery involves the determination of a disease causingprotein's three-dimensional structure. Once the structure is known, novelchemical entities are designed to 'lock-in' to the protein with the aim ofreversing or arresting a disease's progression. Sareum's approach to structure based drug discovery is to produce multiplerecombinant proteins primarily through a baculovirus expression system;determine their structure using x-ray crystallography; and then use itsinnovative template-molecule x-ray screening technology to identify new chemicalentities designed to interact with the target protein. Sareum then uses itshigh-throughput medicinal chemistry platform to rapidly synthesise furthermolecules and develop the most promising into potential drug candidates. Sareum provides its specialist drug discovery capabilities to partners in thepharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The Company aims to successfullydeliver: Programmes for complete gene-to-candidate structure-based discovery;projects to accelerate or improve the productivity of specific activities; anddrug 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 andtrades under the symbol SAR. For further information, please visitwww.sareum.co.uk About Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Infinity is a fully integrated, cancer drug discovery company focused onpathways of cancer cell survival. In addition, through select partnerships,Infinity's distinctive, proprietary collection of small molecules is being usedagainst many of the world's most important diseases. For more information,please visit the Infinity website at http://www.ipi.com This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange