Summit Corporation plc - Receives £220,000 from UK muscular dystrophy charity
02 Oct 2007
Funding from Parent Project UK to support preclinical and zebrafish research programmes
Summit Corporation plc (AIM: SUMM) announces that it has received £220,000 from the UK muscular dystrophy charity Parent Project UK ("PPUK"). The funding will support both Summit's preclinical Duchenne muscular dystrophy ("DMD") programme and an innovative early-stage research project called the ZF Partnership that is seeking to identify additional DMD therapies using zebrafish disease models.
Summit has a well-established DMD drug programme with a lead candidate, SMT C1100, in preclinical development and on schedule to enter clinical trials in H2 2008. As well as supporting continuing preclinical work for this programme, the funding from PPUK will also support Summit's earlier stage research that is assessing libraries of small drug-like molecules through unique zebrafish DMD screening models. The objective is to identify additional complementary DMD therapies and develop these into clinical candidates for future trials.
The funding has been raised by PPUK from private sources including Charley's Fund in the USA and The Gavriel Meir Trust in the UK. PPUK will seek to raise additional donations to further support Summit's DMD programme in the future.
Nick Catlin, CEO of Parent Project UK,
commented, "DMD is a devastating muscle-wasting condition. Young
people are left totally paralysed by their early teens and are
dying from respiratory or heart failure in their early twenties.
There is no cure. Summit's commitment to finding a treatment
for this disease has been inspiring and its first drug candidate -
SMT C1100 - offers our families real hope for a drug treatment in
the near future. We are already committed to using our DMD Registry
to help recruit patients and accelerate the clinical trial phase
for this drug. Summit has now offered us the exciting opportunity
to work with them and expand its Duchenne programme to look for
new
and complementary drugs."
Steven Lee, CEO of Summit plc, commented, "Summit is focused on identifying and developing new drug candidates to treat serious diseases with high unmet medical needs; the Company's commitment to developing medicines for DMD is a key part of this strategy. Summit is working closely with the patient groups and charities to build upon the already significant progress made towards developing medicines to treat this fatal childhood disease and is extremely grateful for the support received from PPUK through this donation."
For more information, please contact:
Summit plc
Steven Lee, PhD, Chief
Executive
Officer
Tel: +44 (0)1235 443951
Darren Millington, ACMA, Chief Financial Officer
Richard Pye, PhD, Investor Relations
Citigate Dewe Rogerson
Mark Swallow / David Dible / Yvonne Alexander Tel: +44 (0)207 638 9571
Evolution Securities
Tim Worlledge / Bobbie Hilliam / Neil Elliot Tel: +44 (0)207 071 4300
About Summit plc
Summit plc is a leading UK biotechnology company that discovers
and develops proprietary new drugs. The Company's internal drug
development programmes are underpinned by its advanced carbohydrate
chemistry and drug screening (chemical
genomics) technology platforms, which it also provides on a
collaborative or fee-for-service basis to the pharmaceutical
industry.
Summit plc has a broad range of drug discovery programmes in the clinical, pre-clinical and discovery stages of development, which target serious diseases with a high unmet medical need. These therapeutic areas include neuro-disorders (neurodegenerative and neuromuscular), anti-infectives, ophthalmic diseases, oncology and regenerative medicines.
Summit plc's in-house drug development capabilities combine
world-class expertise in both carbohydrate chemistry with
high-volume, high-content screening using its proprietary zebrafish
and fruitfly technologies (chemical genomics). These whole organism
screens have the potential to dramatically decrease the time and
cost of drug discovery and development by delivering data that are
highly predictive of the efficacy and toxicity of potential
drug
compounds in humans.
The company listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in October 2004 - symbol: SUMM
Further information about the company is available at www.summitplc.com
About Parent Project UK
Parent Project UK Muscular Dystrophy (PPUK) is the only UK charity that exclusively funds research and campaigns for a better medical care for patients with Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophies. PPUK was set up by parents of boys with DMD in 2001 and has since been instrumental in setting up a consortium of researchers to develop the first clinical trial for a gene therapy in the UK.
The MDEX consortium has already won £1.6m of funding from the Department of Health following lobbying by parents and supporters of PPUK. PPUK has networks of Parent Action Groups across the UK and has recently set up a DMD Registry, http://www.dmdregistry.org/, that will be the first national database of all those living with DMD in the UK. PPUK will make this data available to help accelerate future research and clinical trials.
