iPSC platform

An industry leading iPSC-based drug discovery platform  

Patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) provide unique opportunities for phenotypic screening to identify new mechanisms of disease. Evotec has built an industrialised iPSC infrastructure that represents one of the largest and most sophisticated platforms in the industry. Evotec's iPSC platform has been developed over the last six years with the goal to industrialise iPSC-based drug screening in terms of throughput, reproducibility and robustness to reach highest industrial standards. This effort was initially enabled by a research collaboration with Harvard University involving world-leading scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. More recently, Evotec established collaborations with Celgene, Sanofi, Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden, Censo Biotechnologies and Fraunhofer IME-SP to support Evotec's growing iPSC activities. In addition, we are working together with a number of academic institutions to further broaden and strengthen our iPSC capabilities.

Modelling human disease in a dish and high-throughput screening offers greatest therapeutic potential, however, technical challenges exist in culturing and differentiating these iPSC-derived cells at large scales. Evotec has overcome such hurdles through generation of a cell bank of fully validated iPSC lines, successful scale-up of the manufacturing process and strict quality control parameters.

Strong focus on standardisation, scaling and QC is essential for iPSC-based drug discovery:

•  High-quality iPSC cultures at large scale (QC)
• Industrial processes for the generation of patient-derived target cell types
• Robust disease-relevant phenotypic readouts for screening
• Panel of patient-derived genotypes for patient stratification

Evotec’s iPSC platform is closely connected to a variety of in-house key technologies, defining disease signatures and causal relationships between genetic mutations and perturbation of specific molecular pathways. This creates powerful human translational models that will ultimately enable us to identify better targets and drugs for those patients suffering from diseases with high unmet medical need.

Further drug discovery programmes in other disease areas are currently being set up.