Board Appointment

Sareum Holdings PLC 16 November 2007 For immediate release 16 November 2007 Sareum Holdings plc ("Sareum" or "the Company") Appointment of Dr Alastair Riddell as Non-Executive Director Sareum Holdings plc (AIM: SAR), the specialist structure-based drug discovery business, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Alastair Riddell as Non-Executive Director with immediate effect. Alastair James Riddell, aged 58, was previously Chief Executive Officer of Paradigm Therapeutics Limited, the drug target discovery and development company that was acquired by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company in March 2007. He was also previously Chairman of Surface Therapeutics Limited, the drug discovery and development company that has now been acquired by Serentis. Prior to that Dr Riddell was the Chief Executive Officer of Pharmagene plc, the drug discovery company, for seven years, where he raised £8.6 million in a private placement in 1999 and £41.7 million at IPO in July 2000. He has also held senior positions in international marketing, sales and general management in Amersham International and Centocor. He also previously directed the medical departments of Celltech and Centocor Europe. Dr Riddell was Deputy Chairman of the BioIndustry Association (BIA) and was a member of the executive board of the BIA for 3 years. Dr. Riddell was a practising physician before entering the pharmaceutical industry over twenty years ago. The directors of Sareum believe that Dr. Riddell brings a wide range of industry experience to the Company and consider him a valuable addition to the Board. Commenting on this announcement, Sareum's Chairman, Dr Paul Harper, said: "I am delighted to announce that Alastair has joined Sareum's Board. He is a seasoned biotech entrepreneur with significant Board level experience and will be instrumental in helping to steer the progress of Sareum." Dr. Riddell has, in the previous five years, been a director of the following companies: Current directorships Previous directorships none Surface Therapeutics Limited Paradigm Therapeutics Limited Pharmagene plc Pharmagene Laboratories Trustees Limited Pharmagene Therapeutics Limited BioIndustry Association The Company confirms there is no other information that falls to be disclosed under Schedule 2 paragraph (g) of the AIM Rules. For further information: Sareum Holdings plc 01223 497700 Tim Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer Buchanan Communications 020 7466 5000 Mary-Jane Johnson, Tim Anderson Grant Thornton Corporate Finance 020 7383 5100 Philip Secrett, Colin Aaronson About Sareum Holdings plc Sareum Holdings plc is a structure-based drug discovery business headquartered in Cambridge, UK. The Company was formed in August 2003 to discover new drugs for the treatment of cancer. Sareum's unique approach aims to halve the time it takes to discover new drug candidates. A structure-based approach to drug discovery relies on knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of the proteins that cause disease. Once the structure is known, potential drugs are designed to 'lock-in' to the protein with the aim of reversing or arresting a disease's progression. Knowledge of the structure of the potential drugs and how they 'lock-in' to their target protein assists greatly in the development of high-quality drug candidates. Determining structure is a complex task and requires leading-edge equipment and experienced staff. Sareum's approach to structure determination utilises its proprietary protein expression platform in order to produce multiple recombinant proteins that accelerate structure determination using x-ray crystallography. Once the structure is determined, the Company's innovative fragment screening platform is used to identify novel chemical templates designed to interact with the target protein. Sareum then uses its high-throughput medicinal chemistry platform to rapidly optimise these molecules and develop the most promising into potential drug candidates. Sareum aims to successfully deliver drug candidates for licensing to larger pharmaceutical companies at the pre-clinical or early clinical trials stage. This is funded by provision of its specialist drug discovery capabilities to partners in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Sareum joined the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in October 2004 and trades under the symbol SAR. For further information, please visit www.sareum.co.uk This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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