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news.Germany-based drug discovery firm Evotec has partnered with American biotechnology company Celgene to identify new therapeutics in oncology with an initial focus on solid tumors.
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The partnership uses Evotec's phenotypic screening capabilities and compound libraries.
According to the terms of the long-term drug discovery and development partnership, Celgene will pay an upfront payment of $65m to the German firm.
Further, Evotec could be eligible to get significant milestone payments along with tiered royalties on each licensed program.
Celgene will get exclusive opt-in rights to license global rights to all programs developed under the collaboration with Evotec.
Both Evotec and Celgene had first entered into a drug discovery and development collaboration in December 2016 to identify disease-modifying therapeutics for a variety of neurodegenerative diseases.
Initially, the partnership focused on Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and other neurodegenerative diseases, using Evotec’s induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-based screening platform.
Evotec chief scientific officer Cord Dohrmann said: "We are extremely pleased and encouraged about the opportunity to enter into a second major alliance with our colleagues at Celgene.
“Our first alliance in neurodegenerative diseases has already proven that both companies and teams are united by the same spirit and objectives bringing new and better treatment to patients."
Evotec focuses on rapidly advancing innovative product approaches with some of the well-known pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, academics, patient advocacy groups and venture capitalists.
The Hamburg-based drug discovery solutions company has developed a pipeline of more than 80 partnered product candidates, which are at clinical, pre-clinical and discovery stages.
Apart from its partnerships with Celgene, Evotec had entered into various long-term discovery alliances with companies like Bayer, CHDI, Sanofi, UCB and others.
The company has also forged development partnerships which includes a collaboration with Sanofi in the area of diabetes, and an alliance with Pfizer in the field of tissue fibrosis.
Image: Celgene has formed an oncology drug discovery and development partnership with Evotec. Photo: courtesy of jk1991 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.