Sareum Regulatory News (SAR)

9 Oct 2006 07:00

Sareum Holdings PLC09 October 2006 For immediate release 9 October 2006 SAREUM HOLDINGS PLC ("Sareum" or "the Company") Research Collaboration with PIramed Ltd Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discoverybusiness, is pleased to announce today that it has entered into a significantresearch collaboration with PIramed Ltd, a privately owned UK biotechnologycompany, to discover novel, targeted drug therapies for the treatment of immuneinflammatory diseases. Under the terms of this collaboration, which is scheduled to run for a period ofup to 18 months, Sareum will provide multi-disciplinary research teams with theaim of generating novel drug lead series for further development by PIramed.This involves the generation of novel chemical material using TemplateScreening, Sareum's innovative fragment-based drug discovery technology, andoptimisation into drug leads using Sareum's automated medicinal chemistryplatform. In return, Sareum will receive undisclosed research fees and success milestonepayments, including additional milestone payments if compounds arising out ofthe collaboration advance to clinical development. This is the third multi-disciplinary drug discovery collaboration Sareum hassigned this year. Sareum announced agreements of similar scope with Organon andIdenix in January and February 2006. Commenting on this announcement, Sareum's Chief Executive Officer, Dr TimMitchell, said: "This major collaboration with PIramed is a further endorsementof Sareum's leading position in structure-based drug discovery. We look forwardto successfully using our multi-disciplinary platform to deliver drug candidatesagainst these important disease targets." For further information please contact: Sareum Holdings +44 (0) 1223 497700 Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer Buchanan Communications +44 (0) 20 7466 5000 Tim Anderson, Mary-Jane Johnson About Sareum Holdings plc Sareum Holdings plc is a structure-based drug discovery business headquarteredin Cambridge, UK. Sareum Limited was formed in August 2003 to discover new drugsfor the treatment of cancer and to provide a range of drug discovery services tothe pharmaceutical industry. 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 of thestructure of the potential drugs and how they 'lock-in' to the protein permitsthe best potential drug to be discovered. Determining structure is a complextask and requires leading-edge equipment and experienced staff. Sareum'sapproach to structure determination is to produce multiple recombinant proteinsprimarily through a baculovirus expression system and to determine theirstructure using x-ray crystallography. When the structure is determined, the Company's innovative Template Screeningplatform is used to identify novel chemical starting material designed tointeract with the target protein. Sareum then uses its high-throughput medicinalchemistry platform to rapidly optimise these molecules and develop the mostpromising into potential drug candidates. Sareum provides its specialist drug discovery capabilities to partners in thepharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The Company aims to successfullydeliver: Programmes for complete gene-to-candidate structure-based discovery;projects to accelerate or improve the productivity of specific activities; anddrug candidates for licensing at the Phase I or Phase II clinical trials stage. 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