Evotec Gets $15 Mln From Bristol Myers Squibb On Expansion Of Neuroscience Collaboration

(RTTNews) - Evotec AG (EVTCY.PK), a drug discovery and development company, announced Tuesday that it has expanded its neurodegeneration collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY) to include a new targeted protein degradation approach.

With the expansion, Evotec receives payments totaling $15 milliobn from Bristol Myers Squibb.

The expansion includes the initiation of discovery and development efforts regarding a new strategy to tackle neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's through a novel approach to targeted protein degradation.

Bristol Myers Squibb increases its access to a novel targeted protein degradation approach. The focus will be on selected targets that are relevant to a range of neurodegenerative conditions.

The neurodegeneration collaboration between Evotec and Bristol Myers Squibb was initiated in December 2016 with the goal of identifying disease-modifying treatments for a broad range of neurodegenerative diseases.

The company noted that currently approved drugs only offer short-term management of the patients' symptoms despite a huge unmet medical need for drugs that have the potential to slow down or reverse disease progression. The collaboration leverages Evotec's industrialised iPSC platform using patient-derived disease models, which is one of the largest and most sophisticated platforms in the industry.

Cord Dohrmann, Chief Scientific Officer of Evotec, said, "Our collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb in the field of neurodegenerative disease continues to be highly productive. Many neurodegenerative diseases are driven by disease-causing proteins which have proven to be elusive to traditional drug discovery approaches."