Drug discovery group Sareum Holdings Plc (LON:SAR) will tell investors 2018 has been a year of significant progress.
At the company’s annual meeting, being held in the City of London, chairman Dr Stephen Parker will point to the progress of SRA737, which has been licensed to Sierra Oncology.
Sareum’s NASDAQ-listed partner is currently refining trials of the drug as new data emerged and is prioritising development on high-grade serous ovarian cancer.
Clincial data due by mid-next year
This “reprioritising and enlarging” of the ongoing phase I/II studies have meant that the publication of clinical data is now expected to take place in mid-2019.
Sierra has suggested read-out will be submitted for presentation at ASCO, America’s largest cancer conference, which takes place at the end of May running into early June.
An early-stage trial of SRA737 in patients taking the drug on its own is being carried out at 15 hospitals around the UK and is expected to be concluded in April 2020.
Also ongoing are studies using the treatment in combination with low-dose chemotherapy, while there are plans to use SRA737 in harness with a type of cancer therapy called a PARP inhibitor.
Earlier in the pipeline
Earlier in the pipeline are SDC-1801, for auto-immune diseases, and SDC-1802, for cancer. Preclinical programmes have been mapped out for each discovery with the aim of getting them into the clinic in 2020.
During the year, Sareum bolstered its governance by appointing two new independent directors to the board - Dr Mike Owen and Clive Birch.
Financially, the group was sitting on around £1.4mln in October and has since gone on to raise a further £850,000.
“The board of directors believes that 2018 has consolidated the progress and increasing maturity reported last year,” chairman Parker will tell investors.
“I would like to thank our shareholders, collaboration partners, suppliers, contractors and other stakeholders for their continued support and look forward to providing further updates on progress in 2019.”