Sierra Oncology to present SRA737 at DDR Tx Summit

Sareum Holdings plc

("Sareum" or "the Company")

Sareum licence partner for SRA737, Sierra Oncology, to Present at the DNA Damage Response Therapeutics Summit on 30 January 2019

Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist small molecule drug development business, notes that Sierra Oncology, the licence holder advancing clinical cancer candidate SRA737, has announced that its Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Christian Hassig, will present "Addressing Intrinsic & Acquired PARP Inhibitor (PARPi) Resistance Through Chk1 Inhibition" at the DNA Damage Response (DDR) Therapeutics Summit in Boston, MA. The presentation is scheduled for 9:00 am Eastern Time (ET) on 30 January 2019.

Further extracts from the Sierra Oncology announcement are below and a link to the full announcement can be found by clicking here.

 "Targeting components of the DDR machinery that regulate replication stress, such as Chk1, represents an attractive therapeutic strategy to address both intrinsic and acquired PARPi resistance," noted Dr. Hassig. "For example, CCNE1-driven tumors, frequently found in high grade serous ovarian, breast and endometrial cancers, are associated with high replication stress and are generally insensitive to PARPi therapy. We have demonstrated that our Chk1 inhibitor, SRA737, plus low dose gemcitabine is highly effective in CCNE1-amplified preclinical models, where low-dose gemcitabine induces an additional exogenous form of replication stress further enhancing sensitivity to Chk1 inhibition. Moreover, PARPi acquired resistance is driven, in part, through increased replication fork stabilization and partial recovery of homologous recombination repair, two processes regulated by Chk1. As such, our preclinical results suggest that combining PARPi with SRA737 may prove effective in treating this significant emerging clinical issue."

Sierra Oncology is a key sponsor of the DNA Damage Response Therapeutics Summit, which will gather leading stakeholders from across drug development over two days to discuss how to advance the therapeutic potential of targeting DNA repair pathways.

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Notes for editors: 

Sareum is a specialist drug development company delivering targeted small molecule therapeutics, to improve the treatment of cancer and autoimmune disease. The Company generates value through licensing its candidates to international pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies at the preclinical or early clinical trials stage.

Sareum's leading clinical-stage programme, SRA737, a novel Checkpoint kinase 1 (Chk1) inhibitor licensed to NASDAQ-listed Sierra Oncology, is in Phase 2 clinical trials targeting ovarian and other 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 internal programmes focused on distinct dual tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2) /Janus kinase 1 (JAK1) inhibitors through preclinical development as therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancers. TYK2 and JAK1 have roles in pro-inflammatory responses in autoimmune diseases (e.g. psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases and lupus) and tumour cell proliferation in certain cancers (e.g. T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and some solid tumours). The Company is targeting first human clinical trials in each indication in 2020.

The Company also has an Aurora+FLT3 inhibitor targeting haematological cancers, which is at the preclinical development stage.

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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