Evotec SE has extended and expanded its strategic neurodegeneration partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb.

Evotec said that because the initial partnership was highly productive in generating a promising pipeline of discovery to clinical-stage programs, the two companies agreed to extend and expand the partnership for additional eight years with the goal to further broaden and deepen the strategic alliance.

Evotec and Bristol Myers Squibb initiated the collaboration in 2016 to identify disease-modifying treatments for a broad range of neurodegenerative diseases. Currently approved drugs only offer short-term management of patients’ symptoms and there is a significant unmet medical need for therapies that slow down or reverse disease progression in the field of neurodegenerative diseases.

The partnership pursues an innovative approach to the discovery and development of novel medicines by leveraging several of Evotec’s modality-agnostic precision medicine platforms. The partnership has already been successful in generating a pipeline of discovery and pre-clinical-stage programs. A first program, EVT8683, was in-licensed by Bristol Myers Squibb in September 2021, following the successful filing of an investigational new drug application (IND) with the FDA and has proceeded into the clinical Phase I.

Under the terms of the agreement, Evotec receives $50 million upfront, undisclosed license and performance milestone payments, as well as royalties on product sales. Including the upfront and downstream performance milestone payments, the overall transaction results in a deal potential of $4 billion.

Richard Hargreaves, senior vice president, neuroscience at Bristol Myers Squibb, said: “We are pleased to extend and expand our neuroscience drug development partnership with Evotec. Together we have an exceptional team of cross-functional experts who have built patient-centric biological and analytical systems at scale to identify, validate and develop novel targets for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. We look forward to continuing our drug discovery research into key mechanisms in neurodegeneration and delivering potential therapeutic candidates for patients who are suffering from these devastating diseases.”

Cord Dohrmann, chief scientific officer of Evotec, said: “We are excited to expand our strategic neurodegeneration partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb. This next extension beyond 2030 is a testament to the success and trust of the partnership as well as to the high degree of confidence placed in our platforms and the complementary approach to generate a leading pipeline of highly innovative drug candidates. Together with our BMS colleagues we are confident that we will deliver new medicines that matter to patients with neurodegenerative diseases.”