Sareum Regulatory News (SAR)

24 Apr 2008 11:07

Sareum Holdings PLC24 April 2008 For immediate release 24 April 2008 SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC ("Sareum" or "the Company") Notification of Shareholder Interest Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discoverybusiness, is pleased to announce that it was informed on 23 April 2008 that MrJoseph Edward Craven has purchased 14,200,000 Sareum ordinary shares of 0.025pas part of the placing announced on 14 April, 2008. Mr Craven now holds38,000,000 Sareum ordinary shares representing 4.6 per cent of the Company'stotal voting rights. Commenting on the announcement, Sareum's Chief Executive Officer, Dr TimMitchell, said: "We are very pleased that Mr Craven has chosen to increase hisshareholding in Sareum." Mr Joseph Craven added: "I have been an investor in Sareum since 2005 and havegreat confidence in the Company's management team and long term strategy. I ampleased to be increasing my holding in this business." 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 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