On August 31, 2006 Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discovery business, reported that substantial progress has been made in its joint cancer drug discovery collaboration with The Institute of Cancer Research (The Institute), Europe’s leading cancer research centre, and Cancer Research Technology Limited (CRT), the oncology-focused development and commercialisation company (Press release, Cancer Research Technology, AUG 31, 2006, View Source [SID1234523396]). Sareum, The Institute and CRT have discovered novel compound series which show efficacy in cancer cell models.
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The collaboration, which was announced in July 2005, has discovered several novel compound series that target a specific enzyme in a key biochemical pathway, responsible for preventing the effectiveness of traditional cancer therapeutics such as chemotherapy. In the collaboration the team is now working to fully optimise a leading series of compounds to provide a validated candidate to take forward into clinical development. The new cancer therapeutics developed will potentially allow effective treatment of tumours which currently do not respond to current treatments as well as lowering the dose required of existing therapies to reduce adverse side effects.
Sareum has used its expertise in structure-based drug discovery to identify novel compounds using its innovative Template Screening technology. These compound series have been rapidly progressed utilizing Sareum’s high throughput medicinal chemistry and structure determination platforms combined with the drug screening, specialist cancer biology and medicinal chemistry expertise at The Cancer Research UK Centre for Cancer Therapeutics at The Institute.
Under the terms of the agreement CRT will commercialise the drug candidates developed by the collaboration to secure future clinical development. Payments, milestones and royalties received by CRT will be shared with Sareum and The Institute.
Commenting on the agreement, Sareum’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Tim Mitchell, said: "The quality of the science and technology applied to this collaboration has led to outstanding progress. This demonstrates Sareum’s ongoing commitment to the discovery of new treatments to meet unmet medical needs in cancer. We are now looking forward to advancing our novel chemical series through to clinical candidate nomination next year."
Professor Paul Workman, Director of The Cancer Research UK Centre for Cancer Therapeutics at The Institute of Cancer Research, said: "The addition of Sareum’s powerful technology platform to our own in-depth expertise in the development of targeted molecular therapeutics has allowed us to move forward very rapidly on this exciting and important target. Development of a drug against this target would benefit patients who are currently resistant to current treatments."