Novo Nordisk joins Evotec as drug discovery partner

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.