Sareum shares soar as it starts to cash in on cancer programme

Cambridge biotech company Sareum Holdings reveals that its development partner, CRT Pioneer Fund (CPF) has signed a licence agreement for SRA737 – an experimental programme targeting cancer – with an unnamed US licensee to kickstart a handsome payback chain.

Sareum and CRT have collaborated on developing this programme under which the Cambridge company is entitled to 27.5 per cent of any future income from development milestones and/or royalties and will receive an upfront fee of $137,500.

On the news, Sareum’s shares were trading up over 20 per cent on the UK’s AIM market.

Sareum is a clinical-stage biotech developing next-generation kinase inhibitors for autoimmune disease and cancer.

Additional payments to the aggregate amount of up to $289 million may become payable to CPF under the licensing deal subject to achievement of certain development, regulatory and commercial milestones.

The licensee will also pay tiered high single digit royalties to CPF on the net sales of any product successfully developed and commercialised.

Sareum CEO Dr Tim Mitchell said: “SRA737 has shown considerable promise in earlier clinical studies, demonstrating a robust safety profile and preliminary efficacy, in particular in combination with low dose chemotherapy.

“With CPF, we are very pleased a partner has been identified to advance this exciting molecule into further development and believe this licensing agreement offers the best path forward for SRA737.

“Sareum is entitled to a share of income from potential development and sales milestones from this agreement for SRA737 which have the potential to support Sareum's TYK2/JAK1 development pipeline.

“The team at Sareum is now focused on our lead programme, SDC-1801, which is progressing in clinical studies in Australia, and more broadly on TYK2/JAK1 inhibitors – a class which we believe has significant potential in autoimmune diseases and cancer.”