Sareum Holdings Plc’s (LON:SAR) chairman Stephen Parker will tell shareholders at Thursday’s annual general meeting that the cancer drug discovery and development firm has enjoyed a “year of significant progress”.
The AIM-listed group licensed its Chk1 inhibitor and lead candidate SRA737 to US firm Sierra Oncology just over a year ago.
READ: Sareum announces £700,000 fundraising to support drug development programmes
An update on SRA737’s development programme is due late February, while data from studies is expected to be presented in the second half of next year.
In the meantime, Sareum has been using the almost £2mln it has already received from Sierra as well as a recent £700,000 fundraise to advance its other programmes.
One of those is its TYK2 inhibitors, which the Parker will say the company has made “encouraging progress” with.
The chair expects to undertake studies required to complete the selection of clinical candidates targeting autoimmune and cancer indications next year as well.
Sareum is also on track to complete the preclinical development of its Aurora+FLT3 programme for acute leukaemias.
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The firm is continuing to engage with potential partners with a view to securing similar licensing deals to the one it signed with Sierra, while it is also on the lookout for new research programmes – both from its own in-house discovery platform and from outside.
“The directors consider the year 2017 to have been transformational for Sareum, and I would like to thank our shareholders for their continued support and look forward to providing further updates on progress in 2018,” Parker will say.
Shares fell 5% to 0.86p early on Thursday.