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Sareum chief hoping to conclude partnership deal soon; says he has "irons in the fire"

Published: 10:12 26 Sep 2011 EDT

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The past year has been one of remarkable progress for the cancer drug discovery group Sareum Holdings (LON:SAR). 

This is reflected in the annual results statement posted earlier today, and underlined by a share price that has shot up more than 300 per cent in the last 12 months. 

It is fully funded for the foreseeable future. And its two lead candidates – a Checkpoint 1 inhibitor for solid tumours and an Aurora Kinase inhibitor with potential to treat acute myeloid leukaemia - are showing some early promise.

Tie-ups Cancer Research Technology and the Institute of Cancer Research, meanwhile, lend its pre-clinical research programmes heavyweight backing. 

The only thing missing from this story is a collaboration deal for its Checkpoint 1 compound that has long been mooted but so far has failed to materialise.

“We have got a number of irons in the fire,” said chief executive Dr Tim Mitchell, when I visited the group at their rather modest offices on the outskirts of Cambridge last month. 

“Whether it is licensing, whether it is co-development we don’t know. But there are those sorts of discussions going on.”

Of course Mitchell can’t tell us exactly when a sugar-daddy might agree to fund research on this potentially break-through treatment for cancer.

However recent precedent suggests a tie-up with a big pharmaceuticals or biotechnology group could, and probably will be, transformational.

Just last month tiny Array BioPharma cut a deal worth as much as US$685 million in royalties and milestone payments with Genentech for the right to develop CHK 1 compound similar to that being developed by Sareum.

Interestingly, this gives the German-owned giant two bites at the cherry as Genentech already has a similar drug under development.

Sareum’s own CHK1 candidate is still in the pre-clinical phase of development, which makes one wonder why exactly Mitchell wants to partner up before the compound even leaves the lab.

He says he doesn’t want the company to be “another Alizyme or Antisoma”. These were two leading-edge British biotechnology companies that spent hundreds of millions of pounds on R&D only to see its lead drugs fail expensively in late stage of development. 

“Discovery is what we do,” the Sareum CEO said. “We have spent most of our careers in discovery. 

“We know the deal sizes go up exponentially as you go down the track. But it is important for us to do a deal sooner rather than later.

“We have yet to demonstrate through our own research that we can produce something someone is willing to pay for. The first deals we will do early. The next we will look to push into the clinic.”

Checkpoint 1 is being pushed hard now a pre-clinical tumour candidate has been identified.

“There’s a lot of people we have been talking to for quite some time that have shown some interest,” Mitchell said. “That interest has geared up so we are always optimistic. But we are running to other people’s timelines.” 

“We have been saying we will do a deal in the next six months for quite a while now. Maybe this time it will be true.”

CHK1 works by preventing the cancer cell from repairing its DNA. It is expected to work well in combination with traditional chemotherapy, and has the capacity to combat a range of so called P53 mutant cancers, which encompasses around 60 per cent of all solid tumour types.

On a stand-alone basis it may prove a powerful treatment for leukaemia and a pernicious childhood cancer called neuroblastoma, Michell said.

“We are targeting a single kinase that is applicable to a broad range of cancers,” he added.

More to the point, the company’s fledgling drug may be superior to alternative currently under development in that it is being designed as a once-a-day, oral treatment.

Taken by mouth, a single dose will last 24 hours, which is far more efficacious than a twice a day treatment administered by injection.

“You need to take out the repair mechanism for a whole cell cycle which is 24 hours,” said Mitchell.

“So ideally you want 48 hours of inhibition. In that case two pills are going to work better than four injections.”

Sareum’s plan is to develop “best in class not first in class”, which is what it is aiming for with its Aurora Kinase inhibitor, which blocks the enzymes involved in cell division and may kill cancer cells. 

While it is developing an IV treatment, it is also trying to perfect an orally administered dose. 

The drug has a dual action that targets the FLT3 Kinase associated with acute myeloid leukaemia, which may mean it is more efficacious than similar treatments in development.

“Our forte is being very nimble and to follow up with this best in class rather than first in class model,” Mitchell said. 

“With CHK 1 we knew it absolutely needed oral administration to give that 24-hour knockdown. We were able to change tack quickly. The same goes with aurora...with fLT3. 

“The fact is this is a small organisation. If we want to make a decision it takes us half an hour, where it might take six months for a large company to do that. 

“This is how we beat the big companies at their own game.  In fact I would go as far as to say the big companies have shown they are not very good at research yet they spend a lot of money on it.”

 

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