Re Contract

 

£500,000 GMP service contracts signed with potential total value over £1m

New Director of Sales Appointed

 

 

Oxford, UK, 21 February 2008 - Summit Corporation plc (AIM: SUMM), a leading UK biotechnology company, today announces that its specialist carbohydrate chemistry subsidiary business, Dextra Laboratories, has signed service contracts together worth an initial £500,000 with four undisclosed biotechnology companies; the value of these deals could rise to over £1 million over the next six months. 

 

Dextra will use its world-leading expertise and know-how in carbohydrate chemistry to develop efficient routes of compound synthesis and GMP product supply for its client's drug development and healthcare programmes.  The projects will be conducted at Dextra's GMP facility in Reading, UK, which was completed in June 2007.  This capability proved to be a key factor in the signing of these deals as it permits the Company to produce material suitable for use in human clinical trials up to the Phase II stage of development.

 

Steven Lee, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of Summit plc commented: "Carbohydrate chemistry is becoming an increasingly important area for the discovery, development and manufacture of new and often difficult to synthesise drugs and healthcare products.  Dextra offers a world-class carbohydrate chemistry service and these deals represent the first significant return on our investment in being GMP accredited, a status that is giving us the edge in winning higher-value contracts."

 

 

 

Separately, Summit is pleased to announce the appointment of James Beaumont as Director of Sales at Dextra Laboratories to oversee the Company's ambitious plans to deliver more substantial revenues from its carbohydrate chemistry service business.

 

James was previously Vice President of Business Development at Evotec and brings a wealth of chemistry sales experience to Dextra.  During his time at Evotec, James delivered manufacturing, process and development chemistry contracts worth in excess of €20 million in addition to developing new business in process chemistry R&D, custom synthesis and GMP plant manufacture with multi-national pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.   He has previously held sales positions with the US biotechnology company Genzyme and the US drug delivery technology company, Penwest Pharmaceuticals.

 

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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