Evotec and Janssen team up in immunoncology

Hamburg-based Evotec SE has entered into a R&D and licencing agreement with Janssen Biotech, a J&J subsidiary to develop immune-based therapies. Under the terms of the contract, Evotec will use its screening platforms to identify and validate preclinical drug candidates, while Janssen will conduct and finance clinical development and commercialisation of the compounds.

In addition to research funding, Evotec is eligible for an undisclosed upfront payment, success-based research and commercial milestones of more than $350m, and tiered royalties on products resulting from the collaboration.

The current deal complements a drug discovery collaboration of Evotec with Janssen Pharmaceutica NV inked in June 2022. Under this former agreement, Evotec and Janssen jointly conduct screens on the identified targets including the Hamburg-based TargetAlloMod platform. It comprises a suite of proprietary assay principles and computational tools to assess and screen extracellular receptor targets  for shedding and the induction of shedding by small molecule allosteric modulators. After screening the companies decided to collaborate with hit identification and lead optimisation of the most promising chemical assets, leveraging Evotec’s end-to-end integrated drug discovery and development platform.

According to Evotec, the company has already produced 14 clinical oncology candidate drugsand one marketable product. In fact, Evotec’s preclinical pipeline is one of the largest in oncology, which is partly due to the fact that the Hamburg-based company has become a partner in the development pipeline of Carrick Therapeutics, Excientia or its own spin-off Breakpoint Therapeutics (and several others) through various investments. But partnered projects are also increasingly found in oncology. Here Evotec offers services from target identification to preclinical candidates, but also supports biomarker identification to better characterise patient populations.