Evotec Achieves Two Shionogi Milestones

Evotec AG has achieved two milestones in a multiple target drug discovery collaboration with Shionogi & Co Ltd., triggering two undisclosed milestone payments to Evotec. The two companies will continue to collaborate to progress the fragments through the drug discovery process.

The collaboration was initiated in October 2010 to identify small molecule modulators of various protein-protein interaction targets selected by Shionogi. Evotec has applied its integrated fragment-based drug discovery platform EVOlution to the selected targets. A team of medicinal chemists, biologists, computational chemists and structural biologists will then progress the molecules through the fragment to lead and lead optimization stages.

Dr. Mario Polywka, chief operating officer of Evotec, said, “We are extremely proud that we havereached our first project milestones with Shionogi. This is further validation of our expertise and capabilities in fragment-based drug discovery and we look forward to further supporting Shionogi in the discovery of novel therapeutics.”