- STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP LEVERAGES EVOTEC’S PROPRIETARY PLATFORM CAPABILITIES IN THE FIELD OF PROTEIN HOMEOSTASIS
Hamburg, Germany, 14 June 2022:
Evotec SE (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, MDAX/TecDAX, ISIN: DE0005664809; NASDAQ: EVO) announced today that the Company has entered a drug discovery collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (“Janssen”). Evotec’s innovative TargetAlloMod platforms will be evaluated to discover first-in-class novel mode of action therapeutic candidates. The agreement was facilitated by Johnson & Johnson Innovation.
Under the agreement, Evotec and Janssen will jointly conduct screens on the identified targets and collaborate with hit identification and lead optimisation of the most promising chemical assets, leveraging Evotec’s end-to-end integrated drug discovery and development platform.
Dr Cord Dohrmann, Chief Scientific Officer of Evotec, commented: “We are very proud to enter into this collaboration to explore unique approaches to high potential cell surface drug targets with novel therapeutic modalities and to deliver and make innovative therapeutic options available to patients.”
Besides research funding, Evotec is entitled to success-based research and commercial milestones up to approximately € 210 m per project as well as tiered royalties on products resulting from this collaboration.
About TargetAlloMod
Scientists at Evotec have discovered that for certain extracellular receptors, small molecules can bind allosterically and induce a natural proteolytic cleavage process to shed the ectodomain. This results in the disruption of cell signalling and the shed ectodomain can, in many cases, further act as a sink for the native ligand of the targeted receptor. The TargetAlloMod platform comprises a suite of proprietary assay principles and computational tools to assess and screen extracellular receptor targets for shedding and the induction of shedding by small molecule allosteric modulators. This platform has broad applicability across many therapeutic areas.