Summit Presents the Benefits Zebrafish Bring to Drug Discovery and Development at Two International Conferences
OXFORD, England, 9 April 2008 - Summit Corporation plc (AIM: SUMM), a leading UK biotechnology company, announces that its scientists have presented data that highlight the utility and power of zebrafish in the discovery and development of new drugs at two leading, international drug safety and toxicology conferences. The presentations to an audience of key opinion leaders from industry and academia were given at the Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting (Seattle, WA, USA - March 16-20) and the British Toxicology Society Annual Congress (Guildford, UK - April 7-9).
Copies of the presentations are available on request from Summit at investors@summitplc.com investors@summitplc.com>
Zebrafish are well-characterised model organisms and are used in the screening of potential drug candidates to provide invaluable in vivo data from the earliest stages of drug discovery and throughout the development process. Summit has developed a range of high-throughput safety pharmacology and toxicity screens and also several important zebrafish disease models that can be used to identify and evaluate potential new drug candidates.
Summit has developed a profitable service business offering its zebrafish technology to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to evaluate their own drug programmes. These technologies also have the potential to reduce costs and accelerate the drug discovery process. As such, Summit is establishing itself as a highly valued industrial partner for the life sciences industry and can count seven of the top ten largest pharmaceutical companies as its customers in this area.
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For more information, please contact:
Summit plc
Steven Lee, PhD, Chief Executive Officer
Darren Millington, ACMA, Chief Financial Officer
Richard Pye, PhD, Investor Relations
Tel: +44 (0)1235 443951
+44 (0)7825 313476
Citigate Dewe Rogerson
Mark Swallow, PhD / David Dible / Sylvie Berrebi
Tel: +44 (0)207 638 9571
Panmure Gordon
Andrew Burnett / Rakesh Sharma
Tel: +44 (0)207 459 3600
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 zebrafish drug screening 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 neurological disorders, anti-infectives, ophthalmic diseases and oncology.
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 technologies. 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
Mark Swallow, Ph.D. Citigate Dewe Rogerson
+44 (0)20 7282 2948 (direct) +44 (0)7903 737703 (mobile) +44 (0)20 7638 9571 (switchboard) +44 (0)20 7282 2811 (fax) 3 London Wall Buildings London Wall London EC2M 5SY UK www.citigatedr.co.uk <http://www.citigatedr.co.uk/pharma_biotech.html>
Posted: April 2008
