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Sareum Shares Edge 9.6% Higher on Upbeat Half-Year Results and Operations Update

Simon Mugo trader
Updated 21 Jul 2021

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Scientist in lab

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.

IG chart of Sareum share price 23-04-2021

Sareum shares rallied 9.61% to trade at 2.28p, rising from Thursday’s closing price of 2.08p.

Should you invest in Sareum Holdings shares?

Sareum shares are traded on the London stock exchange's AIM market (the alternative investment market), which is the submarket specifically for smaller companies. AIM stocks are attractive to investors as they have tax advantages and smaller companies have the potential to benefit from rapid growth. But are Sareum shares the best buy? Our stock market analysts regularly review the market and share their picks for high growth companies

Simon has over six years of professional trading experience across FX, commodities and equities. He has a strong passion for financial markets and is particularly focused on price action trading