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Taking some hits (in a good way)
March 2011
SHARING OPTIONS:
HAMBURG, Germany—Evotec AG recently announced that it has
entered into a collaboration with
Takeda Cambridge Ltd., a wholly owned
subsidiary of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. in Osaka, Japan, to identify
small-molecule
modulators against G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) and
protease targets involved in various central nervous system and metabolic
diseases.
Although specifics of the deal are scarce—neither financial
details nor detailed target information have been
disclosed—the companies
report that Evotec will apply its screening platform and proprietary GPCR
modeling software to identify and validate novel
modulators against various
targets selected by Takeda Cambridge.
"We have invested significantly in
our world-leading, hit
identification platform, and this alliance further validates the strength of
this platform and Evotec's ability to bring value
to its partner's drug
discovery efforts," said Dr. Mario Polywka, chief operating officer at Evotec,
in the news release about the deal, while Dr.
Andrew Ayscough, director of
chemistry at Takeda Cambridge, commented in the same release: "We are pleased
to have this opportunity to work with
Evotec making use of their hit
identification platform."
Via e-mail, Polywka tells ddn
that Evotec and the Japanese parent company Takeda had a large,
multiple-year collaboration starting in 2003 on the detection and evaluation of
Alzheimer targets.
"The discussions between Takeda Cambridge and Evotec started
in July 2007 in
terms of a global basis of how Evotec could support Takeda with
providing assay development and hit finding," Polywka says. "At that stage, the
emphasis was more tactical and focused on Takeda's specific outsourcing
requirements in order to address short-term bottlenecks in high-throughput
screening. Although there was no subsequent project in the near term, it was
clear that there was an extremely good strategic fit and the groundwork
done
during this period would be of considerable value going forward. Subsequently,
in September 2010, the two parties re-engaged in more fruitful
discussion
centered on using Evotec's comprehensive hit finding platform."
Polywka says various
discussions took place at various times
between Takeda Cambridge and Evotec in the intervening years between 2003 and
the sealing of this latest deal.
"The more recent conversations were initiated by Takeda and
the inspiration was more to Takeda looking at external capabilities and
expertise to support their hit identification capabilities," Polywka recalls.
"More explicitly, being able to access alternative screening
technologies—for
example, technologies based on single-molecule detection, fragments and
label-free technologies—as well as accessing a high quality
library to tackle
the most challenging of targets, was particularly attractive to Takeda."
Polywka
says that Evotec is one of the world's leading
companies for hit identification and optimization from target to preclinical
development candidates and
even beyond, and that is what makes this a good
pairing of companies.
"The flexible deal terms allow
the pharma partner to support
their internal work efforts with the best fit. This is very different from
company to company. For Takeda Cambridge the
hit-identification and the access
to the Evotec library was important and to move fast on the selected targets,"
Polywka says. "From Takeda
Cambridge's point of view the collaboration will
allow a flexible access to Evotec's capabilities and experts. This will allow them
to work on their
targets with newest technologies and it will also help to
alleviate and avoid bottlenecks."
Although he couldn't share any specific timeline or
milestones, Polywka says there are specific timelines linked to agreed
deliverables
throughout 2011, adding,
"We anticipate that the current collaboration will be a success and be
extended to include more challenging targets.
"
Evotec acquires Munich's Kinaxo for up to $22
million
HAMBURG, Germany—Seeking to expand its drug discovery
platform with cutting-edge
technologies, Evotec AG announced Feb. 9 that it
will acquire Kinaxo
Biotechnologies GmbH, a Munich, Germany-based drug
discovery alliance company supporting the development of targeted drugs, for up
to $22 million
in cash and stock.
Per the agreement, Evotec will pay nearly $4.1 million and
issue nearly 2.6 million shares of its stock to Kinaxo. Evotec
will also pay
nearly $5.4 million for the achievement of certain milestones. The acquisition
is expected to close in April.
Among the Kinaxo technologies Evotec will gain are: Cellular
Target Profiling, which uncovers the molecular targets of
compounds with
unknown mode-of-action and reveals possible off-target side effects early in
the discovery and development process; KinAffinity, which
determines the
cellular selectivity of kinase inhibitors and represents the most important
class of targeted cancer drugs; and PhosphoScout, which
provides valuable
knowledge on drug modes-of-action in vivo and how they respond to drug
treatment.
"Through the acquisition of Kinaxo, Evotec gains access to a
highly innovative technology base in drug discovery, which allows us to
integrate a powerful response prediction platform with our leading drug
discovery expertise. We are proud to significantly strengthen our
performance-based discovery offering to our customers with this unique value
proposition," said Dr. Werner Lanthaler, Evotec's CEO, in a press
release
announcing the deal.
Code: E031108
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