Evotec Achieves $16M BMS Milestone in Neuroscience Alliance

Evotec SE reached another program designation in its neuroscience collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb, triggering a payment of $16 million to Evotec.
 
The program further adds to a growing pipeline in neurodegeneration that also includes EVT8683, which entered clinical development at the end of 2021. While the previously nominated programs are small molecule based, the new project uses an antisense-based approach. Evotec is eligible to receive royalties and percentages of sales of any commercial products resulting from the collaboration. Evotec is also eligible to earn as much as $250 million in development and sales milestones.
 
Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are precisely engineered chemical structures that specifically bind to a targeted RNA to interfere with gene expression. By specifically inhibiting the production of disease-driving proteins in the cells of interest, ASOs can provide new pathways to tackle targets that are difficult to regulate or were previously deemed “undruggable”. The program leverages ASOs originating from Secarna Pharmaceuticals’ LNAplus ASO discovery and development platform through a strategic partnership with Secarna.
 
Dr. Cord Dohrmann, Chief Scientific Officer of Evotec, said, “Our neuroscience collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb was initiated in December 2016. It has also generated a first clinical stage program with EVT8683 as well as an exciting pre-clinical stage pipeline. We are delighted to further expand this pipeline with yet another high-potential program.”
 
The neuroscience collaboration between Evotec and Bristol Myers Squibb aims to identify disease-modifying treatments for a broad range of neurodegenerative diseases. Currently approved drugs only offer short-term management of symptoms and there is an unmet medical need for therapeutic modalities that slow or reverse disease progression. The program leverages Secarna’s LNAplus platform in combination with Evotec’s industrialized iPSC platform using patient-derived disease models.