• THE DESIGNATION OF ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMES BY BRISTOL MYERS SQUIBB TRIGGERED PAYMENTS OF IN TOTAL US$ 40 M TO EVOTEC

Hamburg, Germany, 10 November 2021:
Evotec SE (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, MDAX/TecDAX, ISIN: DE0005664809, NASDAQ: EVO) announced today that the Company reached additional programme designations within its neuroscience collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) triggering payments of in total US$ 40 m to Evotec.

These target-based programme designations further bolster the growing pipeline and are expected to follow EVT8683, which Bristol Myers Squibb opted to license after the successful filing of an IND application with the FDA. 

Dr Cord Dohrmann, Chief Scientific Officer of Evotec, said: “Our collaboration with BMS continues to be highly productive. These achievements are a testimony of the great team spirit between Bristol Myers Squibb and Evotec colleagues that enabled us to advance highly challenging programmes to key value inflection points.”

The collaboration was initiated in December 2016 with the goal of identifying disease-modifying treatments for a broad range of neurodegenerative diseases. Currently approved drugs only offer short-term management of the patients’ symptoms and there is a huge unmet medical need for therapeutic modalities that slow down or reverse disease progression. The collaboration leverages Evotec’s industrialised iPSC platform using patient-derived disease models, which is one of the largest and most sophisticated platforms in the industry.

About Evotec and iPSC

Induced pluripotent stem cells (also known as iPS cells or iPSCs) are a type of pluripotent stem cell that can be generated directly from adult cells. The iPSC technology was pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka’s lab in Kyoto, Japan, who showed in 2006 that the introduction of four specific genes encoding transcription factors could convert adult cells into pluripotent stem cells. He was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize along with Sir John Gurdon “for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent”. Pluripotent stem cells hold great promise in the field of regenerative medicine. Because they can propagate indefinitely, as well as give rise to every other cell type in the body (such as neurons, heart, pancreatic and liver cells), they represent a single source of cells that could be used to replace those lost to damage or disease.

Evotec has built an industrialised iPSC infrastructure that represents one of the largest and most sophisticated iPSC platforms in the industry. Evotec’s iPSC platform has been developed over the last years with the goal to industrialise iPSC-based drug screening in terms of throughput, reproducibility and robustness to reach the highest industrial standards, and to use iPSC-based cells in cell therapy approaches via the Company’s proprietary EVOcells platform.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS 

This announcement contains forward-looking statements concerning future events, including the proposed offering and listing of Evotec’s securities. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “should,” “target,” “would” and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements include comments regarding completion of the offering. These forward-looking statements are based on the information available to, and the expectations and assumptions deemed reasonable by Evotec at the time these statements were made. No assurance can be given that such expectations will prove to have been correct. These statements involve known and unknown risks and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates, which are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond the control of Evotec. Evotec expressly disclaims any obligations or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in Evotec’s expectations with respect thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any statement is based.