Evotec & Novo Nordisk Form Strategic Research Alliance

Evotec AG recently announced a strategic alliance with Novo Nordisk to discover and develop novel small molecule therapies to treat patients suffering from diabetes and obesity as well as co morbidities such as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), cardiovascular diseases, and diabetic kidney disease.

Evotec will apply its drug discovery platform, especially in ligand-based design, to seek to design novel, safe and efficacious products to address diabetes and associated morbidities. Once suitable pre-clinical candidates are selected, Novo Nordisk will use Evotec’s INDiGO platform to move through pre-clinical studies to enter IND registration.

“Novo Nordisk is one of the largest, most successful Pharma companies in the world with a proven leadership position in diabetes and obesity. The integration of our industry-leading discovery and development platform with Novo Nordisk’s deep disease expertise will create a powerful combination that we hope will create a difference for patients with diabetes or obesity. We very much look forward to working with such an innovative partner,” said Dr. Mario Polywka, Chief Operating Officer of Evotec.

 “Evotec is a highly esteemed company in the field of small molecules, and we are very excited about the collaboration. Novo Nordisk is confident that this will open up new possibilities in small molecule drug discovery and development targeting diabetes and obesity with the potential to make a difference for people living with these serious diseases,” added Dr. Marcus Schindler, Senior Vice President, Global Drug Discovery, Novo Nordisk.

Evotec is a drug discovery alliance and development partnership company focused on rapidly progressing innovative product approaches with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academics, patient advocacy groups and venture capitalists. Drug discovery solutions are provided in form of fee-for-service work, integrated drug discovery alliances, development partnerships, licensing of innovative drug candidates, and consulting arrangements. The company operates worldwide and has leading scientific experts, state-of-the-art technologies as well as key therapeutic expertise in the areas of neuroscience, diabetes and complications of diabetes, pain and inflammation, oncology, infectious diseases, respiratory diseases and fibrosis. By leveraging this expertise, Evotec intends to develop best-in-class and first-in-class differentiated therapeutics on its systematic, unbiased and comprehensive infrastructure. The company’s headquarters are located in Hamburg, Germany. Additional operating sites exist in Abingdon and Manchester, UK, Goettingen and Munich, Germany, Verona, Italy, Branford, Princeton and Watertown, USA, Basel, CH as well as Lyon and Toulouse, France.

Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company with 95 years of innovation and leadership in diabetes care. This heritage has given us experience and capabilities that also enable us to help people defeat obesity, haemophilia, growth disorders and other serious chronic diseases. Headquartered in Denmark, Novo Nordisk employs approximately 43,100 people in 79 countries and markets its products in more than 170 countries. For more information, visit novonordisk.com, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube.