Evotec is one of the global leaders in providing complete drug discovery solutions on a stand-alone basis or through holistic, fully integrated drug discovery solutions. In EVT Execute, these services are provided on a typical fee-for-service basis or through a variety of commercial structures including research fees, milestones and/or royalties.
Our EVT Execute alliances are distributed all along the pre-clinical drug discovery value chain, covering a broad range of disease areas including anti-infectives, diabetes and diabetic complications, inflammation and immunology, neuroscience, oncology and pain.
CHDI - Huntington
CHDI Inc., a not-for-profit organisation pursuing a biotech approach to finding therapies for Huntington’s disease, has chosen Evotec as a strategic partner for helping them advance its drug discovery programmes.
Since March 2006, Evotec and CHDI have a number of agreements covering integrated biology and chemistry supported by compound and library management, target validation, stem cell research, high-content screening, computational chemistry, in vitro pharmacokinetics and protein production. These contracts cover most of Evotec's integrated discovery offering. In September 2015, the collaboration was extended for three years, and in August 2018 for another five years. With access to these resources, CHDI has all the tools in place to rapidly discover novel drugs against Huntington’s disease targets and further optimise them to the point of clinical development.
About Huntington’s disease
Huntington’s disease is a familial disease caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gene. Each child of a parent with the mutation in the huntingtin gene has a 50-50 chance of inheriting the mutation. As a result of carrying the mutation, an individual's brain cells fail and die leading to cognitive and physical impairments that, over the course of the disease, significantly impair the individual's quality of life and ultimately cause death. Symptoms of Huntington’s disease, which generally develop in midlife and become progressively more debilitating as time passes, can also develop in infancy or old age. Once overt symptoms start, patients live for about 15 to 20 years. One person in 10,000 is believed to carry a mutation in the huntingtin gene. There is currently no way to delay the onset of symptoms or slow the progression of Huntington’s disease.
Ferring - Reproductive medicine & Women`s health
In October 2018, Evotec and Ferring Pharmaceuticals (“Ferring”) announced a strategic research alliance to discover and develop new small molecule therapies to treat patients living with fertility and gynaecological conditions.
Evotec will apply its drug discovery platform to design novel, safe and efficacious treatments in partnership with Ferring. The multi-target, multi-year collaboration aims to deliver small molecule pre-clinical development (“PDC”) and investigational new drug (“IND”) ready candidates. As part of the alliance, Evotec is eligible for undisclosed research funding and milestones.
Sanofi - Sample management
Evotec has had a successful track record of managing Sanofi’s powder compounds at its Toulouse site since 2015.
In December 2019, Evotec announced that Sanofi will transfer its liquid compounds to Evotec in Toulouse over the next 2 years. Evotec will house the Sanofi compound collections in Toulouse combining central storage efficiency with sample delivery supported by next generation, cutting-edge technologies e.g. acoustic tubes. This expanded strategy will deliver cost efficiencies through the minimisation of redundancies and realisation of synergies between sites.
Takeda - various indications and gene therapy
In September 2019, Evotec SE announced a strategic, multi-year drug discovery collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (“Takeda”). Under the collaboration, the parties aim to establish at least five drug discovery programmes with the goal of Evotec delivering clinical candidates for Takeda to pursue into clinical development.
The collaboration combines Evotec’s ability to effectively drive fully integrated drug discovery programmes with Takeda’s strategic insights into transformative therapeutic approaches in Takeda’s four core therapeutic areas: Oncology, Gastroenterology, Neuroscience and Rare Diseases, as well as Takeda’s development and commercialisation expertise. Evotec will leverage its industry-leading discovery platform to validate therapeutic hypotheses and advance small molecule programmes with Takeda having options to assume responsibility at lead series and upon Evotec delivering a pre-clinical candidate.
Under the terms of the collaboration, Takeda will pay Evotec a one-time, upfront fee to access its platforms. Additionally, Evotec is eligible to receive pre-clinical, clinical, and commercial milestones that can total in excess of $ 170 m per programme as well as tiered royalties on future sales.
In April 2020, Evotec announced that Evotec GT, with operations in Austria, has established a long-term research alliance with Takeda to support Takeda’s growing number of research stage gene therapy discovery programmes.Under the alliance, Evotec will support multiple Takeda programmes targeting conditions aligned with Takeda’s four core therapeutic areas: Oncology, rare diseases, neuroscience and gastroenterology. The alliance leverages Evotec’s growing gene therapy capabilities as well as Evotec’s broader drug discovery platform.
UCB - Various indications
In July 2011, Evotec and UCB entered into a three year integrated drug discovery collaboration to identify small molecule modulators of priority biological targets, selected by UCB, involved in CNS disorders.
As part of the collaboration, Evotec will apply its integrated drug discovery expertise and technologies to identify interesting small molecules against the selected targets. The molecules will be further optimised and progressed through lead optimisation to a pre-clinical candidate.
In October 2011, Evotec and UCB entered into a second multi-year, multi-target integrated drug discovery collaboration in the field of immunology. In October 2013, Evotec announced that the first two milestones were met in this immunology alliance with UCB. The milestones were achieved upon the progression of certain projects into hit-to-lead and into lead optimisation.
In October 2016 announced a collaboration with UCB to provide a broad range of in vitro pharmacology services.
Under the terms of the three-year agreement, Evotec will support UCB's in vitro pharmacology team in drug discovery projects across multiple target classes, particularly in the CNS space. Key activities will include assay development, compound profiling and mechanistic studies and will provide UCB with access to key Evotec expertise in the field of in vitro pharmacology and electrophysiology.