Nuevolution Announces Exclusive License Agreement
Nuevolution A/S recently announced that it has entered an exclusive license agreement with a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., known as MSD outside the US and Canada, for small molecule compounds targeting an undisclosed intracellular target for use as leads in Merck’s drug discovery and development.
Under terms of the agreement, Merck will gain exclusive rights for the further development and commercialization of the compounds. This is the second agreement between Nuevolution and Merck. Nuevolution will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and milestone payments for certain preclinical, clinical, and agreed upon commercial milestones. In addition, Nuevolution is eligible to receive royalties on the commercial sales of approved products. Further financial details were not disclosed.
With this agreement, Nuevolution delivers on its new strategy to transform from a technology platform biotech company to a lead compound development company, providing novel products to improve future health treatments for patients.
Nuevolution applies its Chemetics platform to identify small molecule drug candidates for therapeutically important targets. Chemetics uses proprietary innovative DNA labelling to allow small molecule screening at an unprecedented scale for lead discovery. The technology allows efficient screening of billions of molecules against biological targets. Nuevolution has patented its Chemetics technology and holds a strong validated patent portfolio within the technology field. In its existing collaborations and internal pipeline development, Nuevolution has successfully addressed several challenging targets, including protein-protein interactions by the identification of drug-like small molecules.
“This agreement is the first preclinical compound out-licensing agreement for Nuevolution. It marks the immediate realization of our chosen strategy to both offer access to our technology as well as out-license leads identified by the use of the Chemetics platform,” said Alex Gouliaev, CEO of Nuevolution A/S. “We are very pleased to see that the compounds will be developed further by Merck.”
“Looking at our deal track record, Chemetics has provided us with a commercially proven lead discovery engine,” added Stig Løkke Pedersen, Chairman of Nuevolution A/S. “The out-licensing of compounds represents the best future source of sustainable growth for the company. It is very encouraging to see existing partnerships develop into long term relationships.”
Nuevolution is a leading small molecule lead discovery company founded in 2001 and based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company has developed Chemetics, a unique, patent-protected hybrid of proven wet chemistry and molecular biology, which represents the ultimate fragment-based drug discovery technology. For more information, visit www.nuevolution.com.
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