Sareum, Idenix form agreement to discover novel hepatitis C compounds

By Lisa Kerner

Erie, Pa., Feb. 9 - Sareum Holdings plc said it has entered into a one-year collaborative research agreement with Idenix Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to discover novel hepatitis C compounds.

This is the second collaboration between the two companies. The first collaboration relating to HIV was announced last month, according to a company news release.

Under the agreement, Sareum will provide multi-disciplinary research teams to determine the three-dimensional structures of two of Idenix's hepatitis C disease protein targets using its Template Screening method and automated medicinal chemistry platform.

In return, Sareum will receive research fees and milestone payments up to roughly $5 million, plus an additional milestone payment if compounds advance to clinical development.

"We are very pleased that Idenix has chosen Sareum for an additional collaboration," Sareum chief executive officer Dr. Tim Mitchell said in the release. "This provides further validation of our capabilities and demonstrates that we are a partner of choice for structure-based lead generation and optimisation."

The annual costs for providing care to patients with hepatitis C-associated liver disease in the United States are estimated to be more than $750 million to several billion dollars annually, according to the release.

Sareum is a structure-based drug discovery company based in Cambridge, U.K.

Idenix is a biopharmaceutical company develops drugs for the treatment of human viral and other infectious diseases. The company is based in Cambridge, Mass.

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