Evotec SE and EQRx, a new type of pharmaceutical company committed to developing and important new medicines to patients at radically lower prices, entered a collaboration to design, discover and develop new therapeutic options for patients. The collaboration aims to accelerate EQRx’s pipeline by leveraging Evotec’s data-driven, integrated R&D-platform, applied across different drug modalities and therapeutic areas. This approach aims to expedite the invention and development of novel drugs and helps ensure superior translation from research ideas to safe and efficacious medicines.
 
The collaboration will focus on multiple therapeutic targets in oncology and immunology. Under the agreement, EQRx and Evotec will collaborate on drug discovery, preclinical and clinical development. Evotec will lead drug discovery and preclinical development efforts, and EQRx will be responsible for clinical development, regulatory and commercialization efforts. In addition to jointly funded R&D activities, Evotec stands to benefit from the potential commercial success of the assets developed under the partnership through a variable profit share mechanism.
 
Dr. Craig Johnstone, Chief Operating Officer of Evotec, said, “EQRx’s ambitious and transformative mission to deliver important new therapies to patients at more affordable prices makes them an ideal partner for us. This exciting new partnership will expand the reach of our unique data-driven integrated R&D platform. We look forward to leveraging our combined knowledge, expertise and leading-edge technologies to advance new medicines against validated targets as rapidly as possible to make the biggest possible impact for patients.”
 
“We continue to rapidly expand our early-stage development pipeline through access to innovative, next-generation drug discovery and engineering technologies,” said Carlos Garcia-Echeverria, PhD, chief of Rx creation at EQRx. “This collaboration with Evotec will enable us to engineer and develop precision medicines in immunology and oncology with high quality and speed of execution. We look forward to a productive collaboration to bring innovative, affordable and accessible treatment options to people in need.”