Evotec AG has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kinaxo Biotechnologies GmbH, a Munich-based drug discovery alliance company, for $4.1 million in cash and an additional $5.4 million if performance-based milestones are achieved. With the acquisition, Evotec gains several technologies designed to help its partners make decisions earlier on drug efficacy, safety and patient response. The transaction is expected to close in April 2011.

Kinaxo’s capabilities include Cellular Target Profiling, which is used to uncover molecular targets of compounds with unknown mode-of-action, revealing possible off-target side effects, KinAffinity, used to determine the cellular selectivity of kinase inhibitors, representing an important class of targeted cancer drugs, and PhosphoScout, which provides information on drug modes-of-action in vivo and how they respond to drug treatment.

“Through the acquisition of Kinaxo, Evotec gains access to a highly innovative technology base in drug discovery, which allows us to integrate a powerful response prediction platform with our leading drug discovery expertise. We are proud to significantly strengthen our performance-based discovery offering to our customers with this unique value proposition,” said Dr. Werner Lanthaler, chief executive officer of Evotec AG.

Dr. Andreas Jenne, chief executive officer of Kinaxo, said, “We are excited to join forces with Evotec. Our technology portfolio perfectly fits into Evotec’s integrated service offering. This will allow us to fully leverage our capabilities and grow our business much faster within larger discovery alliances.”