26th Feb 2014 12:01
LONDON (Alliance News) - Shares in Sareum Holdings PLC slid 12% Wednesday as its pretax loss widened in the half-year ended December 31, 2013.
The specialist cancer drug discovery and development business posted a pretax loss of GBP375,000, widened from GBP305,000 in the previous year, due to higher operating expenses. Sareum does not yet produce revenues.
Sareum said it had net cash of GBP1.6 million, up from GBP380,000 in the previous year as a result of its placing in December.
The company said that as a result of this placing and its existing financing facility it was well placed to advanced its existing development programmes and collaborations, and build its pipeline of new drugs.
Sareum expects to spend up to GBP800,000 to the Checkpoint Kinase 1 inhibitor development programme in the current year. The company has secured co-development agreements for three of its lead products.
It has signed a co-development agreement for its autoimmune and inflammatory disorders programme TYK2, and a co-developer agreement for its CHK1 programme with the Cancer Research Technology Pioneer Fund and BACIT Ltd.
Finally, it signed a co-development agreement with China based Hebei Medical University Biomedical Engineering Centre for its Aurora+FLT3 programme, which will be developed for the treatment of blood cancers such as Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.
"With three of our programmes now being advanced via collaborations, we have been able to secure significant additional resource and expertise to take them to later stages of development," said Chief Executive Officer Tim Mitchell in a statement. "By taking this route, we have also been able to maintain exposure to the greater upside associated with advanced programmes whilst mitigating much of the risk and cost had we attempted to take them forward alone."
Shares in Sareum were trading down 12% at 0.575 pence Wednesday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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