Sareum Regulatory News (SAR)

30 Jul 2007 07:02

Sareum Holdings PLC30 July 2007 For immediate release 30 July 2007 SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC ("Sareum" or the "Company") Collaboration Extension with H. Lundbeck A/S Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discoverybusiness, is pleased to announce that, based on the success of the previousagreement announced in August 2006, H. Lundbeck A/S (Copenhagen: LUN) havechosen to extend their collaborative agreement with Sareum for a further 12months. Under the terms of this agreement, Sareum will continue to apply its skills inhigh throughput protein expression, purification and structure determination toassist Lundbeck's scientists in developing new and improved therapeutics to helppatients suffering from diseases of the central nervous system, Lundbeck's keydrug discovery focus area. 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 very pleased to have successfully supported Lundbeck's key drugdiscovery programs over the last 12 months, and look forward to continuing thissuccessful relationship over the next year. Delivering on long termrelationships with important customers such as Lundbeck is a key component ofour business strategy and further evidence of our success in being a partner ofchoice for structure-based drug discovery." For further information: Sareum Holdings 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