Sareum Regulatory News (SAR)

14 Apr 2008 09:26

Sareum Holdings PLC14 April 2008 For immediate release 14 April 2008 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, through itsbroker, Dowgate Capital Stockbrokers Limited, 219,400,000 ordinary shares of0.025p nominal value ("Ordinary Shares") at a price of 0.25p per share to raise£548,500 before expenses. The funds raised from this share issue will be used toprovide additional working capital for the Company. Following the issue of these shares, the Company's issued share capital willconsist of 818,097,713 Ordinary Shares. The Company does not hold any ordinaryshares in Treasury. Therefore the total number of ordinary shares with votingrights is now 818,097,713. This figure may be used by shareholders as thedenominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they arerequired to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, theCompany under the Financial Services Authority's Disclosure and TransparencyRules. Application has been made for the admission of 219,400,000 shares to trading onAIM with admission expected to take place on 18 April 2008. Commenting on the announcement, Sareum's Chief Executive Officer, Dr TimMitchell, said: "We are pleased to have been able to raise funds in difficultmarket conditions. This placing will provide valuable additional funds for thebusiness." 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