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Novo Nordisk joins Evotec as drug discovery partner

Hamburg headquarters of Evotec AG. © Evotec


by tg

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

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.

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