Shares of Sareum Holdings Plc (LON: SAR) edged 9.61% higher after announcing the preliminary results for the six months ended 31 December 2020.
The biotech company made a loss of £550,000 during the period showing an improvement from the £610,000 loss reported in 2019, and had cash reserves of £1.3 million at the end of December compared to £1 million in 2019.
The report’s highlight was its operational highlights, including the £174,000 grant award from the UK Research & Innovation to investigate whether its SDC-1801 drug candidate could be used to treat severe cases of COVID-19.
Sareum said that initial results demonstrate that SDC-1801 reduces the levels of cytokines in human lungs infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Preliminary results are expected in mid-2021.
The company also made significant progress testing its SDC-1801 drug on autoimmune diseases and designed a new formulation containing higher dosages found to be well-tolerated during clinical studies.
Sareum was granted a US patent (US 10,882,829) in January 2021 for its cancer immunotherapy drug SDC-1802 covering the US and all major territories.
The firm recently amended its 2016 licensing agreement signed with Sierra Oncology to develop SRA737: A Selective Chk1 inhibitor for solid cancers and expects the revised milestone schedules, including a $2 million payment to speed up the project.
Sareum also discontinued its partnership with its licensing partner for the FLT3+Aurora kinase inhibitor programme after failing to achieve the required bioavailability.
Dr Tim Mitchell, Sareum’s CEO, said:
“Sareum has continued to make good progress with the preclinical development of our proprietary dual TYK2/JAK1 inhibitor programmes. We are working hard to finalise the preclinical programme for SDC-1801, which is needed to complete our preparations for clinical trials. We expect to submit our exploratory CTA mid-year 2021, which if approved would allow the first human trials with SDC-1801 to commence, marking an important milestone for the Company.”
Sareum share price.
Sareum shares rallied 9.61% to trade at 2.28p, rising from Thursday’s closing price of 2.08p.
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