Sareum Regulatory News (SAR)

22 Oct 2007 07:01

Sareum Holdings PLC22 October 2007 For immediate release 22 October 2007 SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC ("Sareum" or "the Company") Fundraising Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discoverybusiness, is pleased to announce that it has agreed to place 138,888,889Ordinary Shares of 0.025p nominal value at a price of 0.9p per share to raise£1.25 million before expenses. 25,944,889 of these shares are being placedsubject to approval at the Company's AGM on 15 November 2007. Mr and Mrs Leonard Licht have agreed to subscribe to 33,333,333 new OrdinaryShares and together will hold 13.43% of the Company's enlarged issued sharecapital1. The Directors of the Company have agreed to subscribe to 2,000,000 newOrdinary Shares. The remainder is being placed with clients of the Company'sbroker, Ellis Stockbrokers Limited. Mr Leonard Licht is a Partner of Hg Capital and previously has been a formerfounding director and Vice Chairman of Mercury Asset Management and the DeputyChairman of Jupiter Tyndall Group. The funds raised from this share issue will used to advance the Company'sin-house development pipeline of cancer drug candidates and to provideadditional working capital. The Directors share purchases are:Name Number of shares Number of shares held Percentage of issued purchased following share purchase share capital1Dr Paul Harper 1,111,111 2,444,444 0.41%Dr Tim Mitchell 111,111 42,780,471 7.15%Mr Giorgio Reggiani 555,556 555,556 0.09%Dr John Reader 111,111 43,447,111 7.26%Dr David Williams 66,667 42,735,987 7.14% Application has been made for the admission of 112,944,000 shares to trading onAIM with admission expected to take place on 26 October 2007. Application willbe made for the admission of 25,944,889 shares to trading on AIM with admissionexpected to take place on 21 November 2007. 1 Percentage of share capital assuming AGM approval for the issue of 25,944,889new Ordinary Shares. Commenting on the announcement, Sareum's Chief Executive Officer, Dr TimMitchell said: "This placing will provide valuable funds to advance our in-housecancer programs towards a stage where they become attractive licencingopportunities. We are also very pleased that Mr and Mrs Licht have chosen toincrease their shareholding in Sareum." For further information: Sareum Holdings plc 01223 497700 Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive OfficerBuchanan Communications 020 7466 5000 Tim Anderson, Mary-Jane JohnsonGrant Thornton Corporate Finance 020 7383 5100 Philip 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