Evotec’s strategic alliance with Celgene Corp. has been expanded to include a new cell type, triggering $9.0 million payment to Evotec.

Evotec and Celgene initiated the collaboration in December 2016 to identify disease-modifying treatments for a broad range of neurodegenerative diseases. Since then, the companies have achieved several milestones including advancement of one program into lead optimization as well as including additional cell lines and now a new cell type.

Currently approved drugs only offer short-term management of symptoms and there is a huge unmet medical need for therapeutic modalities that slow down or reverse disease progression in the field of neurodegenerative diseases. The collaboration leverages Evotec’s unique human iPSC technology platform, which is one of the largest and most sophisticated platforms in the industry.

Dr. Cord Dohrmann, chief scientific officer of Evotec, said, “Patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases today have limited treatment options, the majority of which only support the management of symptoms but do not address the cause of their disease. With our iPSC platform and Celgene’s expertise, we feel confident to provide physicians with additional treatment options in the future and to deliver disease-modifying treatments to patients.”