• Evotec Signs Agreement with Hypha Discovery to Further Enhance Its Lead Identification Platform
• Evotec gains access to Hypha’s high quality natural product screening collection, MycoDiverse™ 

Hamburg, Germany – 18 March 2010: Evotec AG (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, TecDAX) today announced that it has signed an agreement with Hypha Discovery Ltd. Under the terms of the agreement, Evotec will be able to provide its screening clients with access to Hypha’s MycoDiverse™ natural product collection for use as part of its hit and lead identification services. Furthermore, following screening, Evotec could leverage its capabilities and expertise in natural product chemistry and medicinal chemistry to optimise promising hit compounds.

The MycoDiverse™ collection, which is unexploited in most therapeutic areas, contains samples of high chemical novelty. This, allied with Evotec’s recognised expertise and proprietary technologies in assay development, screening and medicinal chemistry, creates a comprehensive platform for lead generation via natural product screening.

Dr Liam Evans, Chief Executive Officer of Hypha Discovery stated: “Evotec is a world leading provider of high throughput screening services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and as such this strategic partnership provides new and exciting opportunities to find novel drug leads resulting from our breakthrough fungal fermentation technology.”

Dr Mark Ashton, Executive Vice President, Business Development of Evotec commented: “We are continually looking at ways to enhance Evotec’s offering to its customers. We see access to Hypha’s high quality natural product collection as a logical step towards offering our customers further choices for lead identification. We feel that our ability to offer the screening of natural products is complementary to also providing access to our high quality, small molecule library.” 

Forward-looking statements

Information set forth in this press release contains forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about our expectations and assumptions concerning our strategic collaborations, our regulatory, clinical and business strategies, the progress of our clinical development programmes and management's plans, objectives and strategies. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. In particular, the risks and uncertainties include, among other things: risks that product candidates may fail in the clinic or may not be successfully marketed or manufactured; the risk that we will not achieve the anticipated benefits of our collaborations, partnerships and acquisitions in the timeframes expected, or at all; risks relating to our ability to advance the development of product candidates currently in the pipeline or in clinical trials; our inability to further identify, develop and achieve commercial success for new products and technologies; the risk that competing products may be more successful; our inability to interest potential partners in our technologies and products; our inability to achieve commercial success for our products and technologies; our inability to protect our intellectual property and the cost of enforcing or defending our intellectual property rights; our failure to comply with regulations relating to our products and product candidates, including FDA requirements; the risk that the FDA may interpret the results of our studies differently than we have; the risk that clinical trials may not result in marketable products; the risk that we may be unable to successfully secure regulatory approval of and market our drug candidates; and risks of new, changing and competitive technologies and regulations in the U.S. and internationally.

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