Sareum Regulatory News (SAR)

SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC

("Sareum" or "the Company")

Sierra Oncology to host Key Opinion Leader Meeting "Beyond PARP: The Clinical Potential of Next Generation DNA Damage Response (DDR) Therapeutics" on October 12th in NY

Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist cancer drug discovery and development business, notes that Sierra Oncology, the licence holder advancing clinical cancer candidate SRA737, will host a Key Opinion Leader (KOL) luncheon on the topic of "Beyond PARP: The Clinical Potential of Next Generation DNA Damage Response Therapeutics" on Thursday, October 12 from 12:00-13:30hrs EST in New York, USA.

The meeting will feature presentations by three KOLs in DDR scientific and clinical development:

• Leonard Post, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of Vivace Therapeutics; former CSO of BioMarin Pharmaceutical, will discuss lessons learned from PARP inhibitor development, with a focus on optimizing drug properties;

• Eric J. Brown, PhD, Associate Professor of Cancer Biology at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, will discuss the ATR/Chk1 pathway and its biology, highlighting emerging views on the importance of replication stress;

• Geoffrey I. Shapiro, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; Clinical Director at the Center for DNA Damage and Repair, and Director of the Early Drug Development Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, will discuss translating emerging DDR science into the cancer clinic, emphasizing the importance of patient selection strategies.

In addition to the KOL presentations, Dr. Nick Glover, President and CEO of Sierra Oncology, will provide a brief overview on the company's ongoing clinical development program for SRA737, a potent, highly selective, orally bioavailable small molecule inhibitor of the emerging DDR target, Chk1.

Following the presentation, the KOLs, along with members of Sierra's Senior Management team, will be available to answer questions.

A live webcast of the event and replay will be accessible here:

Webcast: www.sierraoncology.com

Direct link: http://lifesci.rampard.com/20171012/

About the Key Opinion Leaders

Leonard Post, PhD, is Chief Scientific Officer of Vivace Therapeutics and also serves as an advisor to numerous biotechnology companies and to venture investors. Until July 2016, he was Chief Scientific Officer of BioMarin Pharmaceutical, and before that was CSO and cofounder of LEAD Therapeutics which was acquired by BioMarin in 2010. His work in DNA repair involved the discovery of the PARP inhibitor talazoparib at LEAD and its development into Phase 3 at BioMarin. Talazoparib is currently being tested in EMBRACA, a Phase III clinical study in gBRCA+ locally advanced and/or metastatic breast cancer. From 2000-2006, he was Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Onyx Pharmaceuticals, during the clinical development of Nexavar from IND through NDA approval. Prior to Onyx, he was at Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical where he was VP of Discovery Research; and before that at The Upjohn Company in several positions. Dr. Post is currently a member of the board of directors of Viralytics Ltd., an Australian Stock Exchange-listed company; and of private companies Orphagen Pharmaceuticals, Fedora Pharmaceuticals and Oxyrane Ltd.

Eric J. Brown, PhD is an Associate Professor of Cancer Biology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Brown's laboratory examines how signaling maintains genome stability during DNA synthesis and how this function is essential to cancer cells. His laboratory was the first to report that oncogenic stress is sufficient to cause selective sensitivity to ATR inhibition. Dr. Brown's laboratory is currently identifying predictive biomarkers of therapeutic benefit and the mechanisms of action of these drugs through a combination of genome-wide breakpoint mapping and replication fork proteomics. In collaboration with clinical researchers, these biomarkers of response will be exploited in current and future clinical trials. Collectively, the Brown laboratory seeks both to define the mechanisms of action of ATR/Chk1 inhibitors and to identify their optimal uses in cancer therapies. Dr. Brown received his PhD (Immunology) from Harvard University in 1996. He performed his doctoral research with Dr. Stuart Schreiber at Harvard University, where he purified and cloned the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR). In his postdoctoral research in Dr. David Baltimore's laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Brown investigated the impact of ATR suppression on genome stability and checkpoint signaling in response to replication stress.

Geoffrey I. Shapiro, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Early Drug Development Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Shapiro runs one of the largest Phase 1 clinical trials programs in the United States and dedicates his time to developing leading cancer treatments. He is also a member of Dana-Farber's Thoracic Oncology Program and a member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center SPORE (Specialized Program of Research Excellence) in Lung Cancer. Dr. Shapiro conducts both basic and translational research on cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors, with a focus on defining the role of these inhibitors in the cellular response to DNA damage. Dr. Shapiro received his PhD in 1987 and his MD in 1988 from Cornell University, followed by postgraduate training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital, Boston. He completed a fellowship in medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, during which he investigated the role of cell-cycle-related proteins in lung cancer. He joined the Dana-Farber faculty in 1994.

The Press release from Sierra Oncology can be found by clicking here

For further information, please contact: 

Notes for editors: 

Sareum is a specialist drug discovery and development company delivering targeted small molecule therapeutics, focusing on cancer and autoimmune disease, and generating value through licensing them to international pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies at the preclinical or early clinical trials stage.

Its most advanced programme, SRA737, is a novel Checkpoint kinase 1 (Chk1) inhibitor licensed to NASDAQ-listed Sierra Oncology and in clinical trials targeting a range of advanced cancers. The key role of Chk1 in cancer cell replication and DNA damage repair suggests that SRA737 may have broad application as a targeted therapy in combination with other oncology and immune-oncology drugs in genetically defined patients.

Sareum is also advancing programmes to develop novel tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2) inhibitors in autoimmune diseases and cancers, and Aurora+FLT3 inhibitors in haematological cancers, which are in the IND-enabling preclinical and lead optimisation stages.

The Company's drug discovery technology platform (SKIL® - Sareum Kinase Inhibitor Library) is being applied to generate drug research programmes against other kinase targets.

Sareum Holdings plc is listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, trading under the ticker SAR. For further information, please visit www.sareum.co.uk

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