Evotec, J&J in Alzheimer’s Discovery Pact

Evotec AG has entered into a discovery and development collaboration with the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center in CA to identify new targets for Alzheimer’s disease. Evotec will work with Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a J&J subsidiary, to discover and develop novel treatments for AD.
 
Janssen will fund target discovery research through research payments and progress-related milestones for the next three years and will have the opportunity to internalize selected targets and therapeutic candidates from the TargetAD database for preclinical and clinical development. Janssen will reimburse as much as $10 million in research costs and make preclinical, clinical, regulatory and commercial payments of as much as $145 million per program based on the achievement of certain milestones. Evotec will receive royalties on future sales of any products that may result from the collaboration.
 
Evotec’s TargetAD database provides a source of potentially novel AD drug targets derived from the analysis of dysregulated genes in well-characterized human brain tissues representing all stages of disease progression, as well as control tissues from non-demented subjects. 
 
Dr. Cord Dohrmann, chief scientific officer of Evotec, said, “The TargetAD alliance provides a systematic and comprehensive approach to the discovery of novel drug AD targets which leverages Evotec’s strength in neuroscience discovery with Janssen’s preclinical and clinical drug development capabilities for the discovery of novel treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.”