Sareum Regulatory News (SAR)

18 Jun 2007 12:34

Sareum Holdings PLC18 June 2007 18 June 2007 SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC ("Sareum" or the "Company") Directorate Change Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR) announces that Edward Oliver has retired from theCompany and its Board of Directors with effect from June 30 2007. The Company is also pleased to announce that Mr. Giorgio Reggiani has beenappointed as Finance Director and will immediately assume Mr. Oliver'sday-to-day responsibilities. Mr. Reggiani is not joining the Sareum Board ofDirectors at this stage although it is anticipated that he will do so withinthree months. A further announcement will be made as appropriate. Mr. Reggiani is a Chartered Management Accountant with 17 years of seniorfinancial experience in companies including Esprit Capital Partners LLP, VidusLimited and Mobile Systems International plc. Commenting on this announcement, Sareum's CEO, Dr Tim Mitchell, said: "On behalfof the Board, I would like to thank Edward for his contribution to thedevelopment of the Company over the past three years and wish him well for thefuture. I am delighted to welcome Giorgio to the management team where hisextensive financial and commercial experience will be of great value to Sareum'sfuture growth and success." For Further Information: Sareum Holdings plc 01223 497700Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer Buchanan Communications 020 7466 5000Tim Anderson, Mary-Jane Johnson Grant Thornton Corporate Finance 020 7383 5100Philip Secrett, Colin Aaronson Notes for editors: About Sareum Holdings plc Sareum Holdings plc is a structure-based drug discovery business headquarteredin Cambridge, UK. The Company was formed in August 2003 to discover new drugsfor the treatment of cancer. Sareum's unique approach aims to halve the time ittakes to discover new drug candidates. A structure-based approach to drug discovery relies on knowledge of thethree-dimensional structure of the proteins that cause disease. Once thestructure is known, potential drugs are designed to 'lock-in' to the proteinwith the aim of reversing or arresting a disease's progression. Knowledge ofthe structure of the potential drugs and how they 'lock-in' to their targetprotein assists greatly in the development of high-quality drug candidates.Determining structure is a complex task and requires leading-edge equipment andexperienced staff. Sareum's approach to structure determination utilises itsproprietary protein expression platform in order to produce multiple recombinantproteins that accelerate structure determination using x-ray crystallography. Once the structure is determined, the Company's innovative fragment screeningplatform is used to identify novel chemical templates designed to interact withthe target protein. Sareum then uses its high-throughput medicinal chemistryplatform to rapidly optimise these molecules and develop the most promising intopotential drug candidates. Sareum aims to successfully deliver drug candidates for licensing to largerpharmaceutical companies at the pre-clinical or early clinical trials stage.This is funded by provision of its specialist drug discovery capabilities topartners in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. 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 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange