Evotech And Celgene Enter Partnership In The Field Of Targeted Protein Degradation

• The Collaboration Will Focus On Targeted Protein Degradation
• Evotec’s Panomics And Data Analytics Platforms Will Be Leveraged
• Financials Include Upfront Payment As Well As Significant Potential Milestone-Based Payments And Royalties

Evotec AG announced recently that Evotec and Celgene Corporation (“Celgene”) have entered into a third long-term strategic drug discovery and development partnership in the field of targeted protein degradation.

In this collaboration, Evotec and Celgene will leverage Evotec’s Panomics platform in order to identify drug targets which are traditionally difficult to track. Evotec’s Panomics platform applies in particular high-end proteomics and transcriptomics at industrial scale to profile and select promising drug candidates on the basis of comprehensive cell biological profiles. Evotec’s Panomics platform also includes an integrated data analytics platform, “PanHunter”, which facilitates the analysis and interpretation of large ‘omics’ data sets.

The collaboration will leverage the state-of-the-art proteomics expertise of Evotec scientists at the sites in Munich, Germany, and Toulouse, France. Under the terms of the agreement, Evotec will receive an undisclosed upfront payment as well as significant milestone-based payments and tiered potentially double-digit royalties on each licensed programme. Celgene holds exclusive rights for all programmes arising from this collaboration. 

Dr Cord Dohrmann, Chief Scientific Officer of Evotec, commented: “We are very excited to enter into this third partnership with Celgene, opening opportunities to expand beyond neurodegeneration and oncology. Addressing traditionally undrugable targets via targeted protein degradation is a highly attractive and promising approach which has not been explored systematically.”