Sareum Regulatory News (SAR)

8 Jan 2007 07:00

Sareum Holdings PLC08 January 2007 For immediate release 8 January 2007 SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC ("Sareum" or "the Company") New Investment in Sareum Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discoverybusiness, is pleased to announce that it has issued 47,058,824 ordinary sharesof 0.025p to Mr and Mrs Leonard Licht at a price of 0.85p per share. As aresult, Mr and Mrs Licht between them hold 10.23% of the Company's enlargedissued share capital. Mr Leonard Licht is the Chairman of Hg Capital, a former founding director andVice Chairman of Mercury Asset Management and previous Deputy Chairman ofJupiter Tyndall Group. The funds raised from this share issue will be used to provide extra workingcapital and for the purchase of specific capital items for the expandingbusiness. Application has been made for the admission of these shares to trading on AIMwith admission expected to take place on 11 January 2007. Commenting on the announcement, Sareum's Chief Executive Officer, Dr TimMitchell said: "This significant investment by an experienced investor as MrLicht is a positive endorsement of the long term potential value of Sareum'sdrug discovery business." Commenting on the announcement, Mr Leonard Licht said: "As an experiencedinvestor, I believe Sareum to be well positioned to continue their excellentprogress and ultimately occupy an important place in the Pharmaceutical andBiotechnology sector." For further information: Sareum Contacts: Sareum Holdings 01223 497700 Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer Buchanan Communications 020 7466 5000 Tim Anderson, Mary-Jane Johnson 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