• GOAL IS TO DEVELOP A BIFUNCTIONAL DEGRADER TO INTERFERE WITH THE RNA SPLICING TO DEVELOP A FIRST-IN-CLASS CANCER TREATMENT 
• PROJECT ORIGINATES FROM PROF. DR IVAN ĐIKIĆ’S LAB GROUP AT THE GOETHE UNIVERSITY OF FRANKFURT
• BELAB2122 AIMS TO DEVELOP ACADEMIC PROJECTS FROM THE RHINE-MAIN-NECKAR REGION OF GERMANY TO VALUE INFLECTION POINTS THAT ALLOW THE FORMATION OF NEW JOINTLY OWNED SPIN-OFF COMPANIES
  
  
  

Hamburg, Germany, 04 July 2022:
Evotec SE (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, MDAX/TecDAX, ISIN: DE0005664809; NASDAQ: EVO) announced today that a project has been selected for further development within beLAB2122, a translational BRIDGE collaboration between Evotec and Bristol Myers Squibb. beLAB2122 aims to bring together leading academic institutions from the Rhine-Main-Neckar region of Germany to efficiently advance first-in-class therapeutic options across all therapeutic areas and formats into investable drug discovery and early development projects.

The project originates from the lab group of Prof. Dr Ivan Đikić, Molecular biologist and Director of the Institute for Biochemistry II at the Goethe University Frankfurt and was initiated by Innovectis, a technology transfer company of the Goethe University. The project aims at using a bifunctional degrader to selectively target an enzyme with high relevance for the splicing of RNA as a novel pathway in cancer. beLAB2122 will leverage Evotec’s integrated discovery and development platform to validate the approach further and develop a potential first-in-class programme as a treatment for certain cancer types.

beLAB2122 was founded in April 2021 as a translational collaboration between Evotec and Bristol Myers Squibb. The project from the University of Frankfurt marks the second project to be developed within this academic BRIDGE collaboration. The goal of beLAB2122 is to develop academic projects to value inflection points that allow the formation of new jointly owned spin-off companies.

Dr Thomas Hanke, EVP & Head of Academic Partnerships at Evotec, commented: “We are very excited about this project with the Goethe University Frankfurt within the beLAB2122 collaboration. The project addresses a highly promising therapeutic mechanism and holds the potential for a novel oncology treatment. With BRIDGE collaborations such as beLAB2122, Evotec aims at accelerating academic innovations into drug discovery to allow new company formations. We are keen to see the first results and look forward to progressing this and many more interesting academic projects.”

Prof. Dr Ivan Đikić, Molecular biologist and Director of the Institute for Biochemistry II at the Goethe University Frankfurt, added: “This programme offers an excellent opportunity for academic researchers to collaborate with pharma partners in the early discovery stage. The major benefit of working together is to provide faster and better validation of promising therapeutic targets and enable rapid translation, e.g. by creating jointly owned spin-off companies. This also adds an important facet to scientific training and is therefore of enormous value to Goethe University.” 

Please follow this link to the press releases from Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main.

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