Evotec yesterday announced the strategic alliance, under which the company will support Novo Nordisk’s drug discovery and development efforts. Following candidate selection, Novo Nordisk will use Evotec’s INDiGO platform to advance into preclinical trials.
A spokesperson from Evotec told us that this alliance is an integrated drug discovery and development alliance within the company’s EVT Execute segment. As of 2017, the company has 760 such alliances, according to its website.
“In such an integrated alliance, our partners can access our leading drug discovery and development services along the value chain to accelerate their projects, allowing for seamless transition of the projects along the value chain, thereby reducing waste time,” said the spokesperson.
The companies are targeting small molecule therapies for the potential treatment of obesity and diabetes and co-morbidities, including cardiovascular disease, diabetic kidney disease and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
“Evotec has over 15 years of experience in metabolic disease drug discovery, starting from target identification up to pre-clinical development,” said the spokesperson.
Evotec at its Germany site will be joined by a team from its Italy site to work on this project. The company was not able to disclose financial details or further information on the timeframe.
According to the spokesperson, Novo Nordisk and Evotec had only worked on minor joint business activities prior to this alliance.
We recently reported that Stealth BioTherapeutics also worked with Evotec to benefit from the INDiGO platform for the development of the company’s mitochondrial dysfunction drug.
