A pancreatic islet from a mouse in a typical position, close to a blood vessel; insulin in red, nuclei in blue. © Jakob Suckale

Novo Nordisk joins Evotec as drug discovery partner

Novo Nordisk and Evotec have joined forces to find new drugs in the lucrative diabetes and obesity markets.

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The companies announced that they will also seek to find drug candidates to treat co-morbidities such as diabetic kidney disease, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and cardiovascular diseases. Under the agreement, Evotec will apply its small molecule  drug discovery platform, especially in ligand-based design, to find promising drug candidates to treat patients with diabetes and obesity. Once suitable preclinical candidates are selected, Novo Nordisk will use Evotec’s INDiGO platform – a tech portfolio to assess ADMET acquired for €62m in 2016 by the acquisition of Cyprotec – to move through pre-clinical studies to enter IND registration.

No financial details of the deal were disclosed. However, usual conditions of similar Evotec deals included €1m-10m R&D grants, €150m in milestones per compound and 8% tiered royalties on average. The deal adds new projects to Evotec’s portfolio of more than 60 R&D co-owned projects.

Novo Nordisk is a leader in diabetes medicines.The chronic incapacitating disease, which affected about 425 million people worldwide in 2017 (2015: 415 million) and a market of US$727bn, is associated with chronic co-morbidities such as cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, nerve damage and eye diseases. Obesity affects more than 650 million adults worldwide and is often cited as a major risk factor for many diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders, and several cancers. Treatment cost in 2017 were estimated over US$800bn in 2017 and is rising steeply.

© european biotechnology
Thomas Gabrielczyk
22 August 2018

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