Evotec Achieves Milestone in Drug Discovery Collaboration with Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

Evotec AG announced that a compound identified and optimised in a research collaboration with Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (“Ono”) has been nominated to enter pre-clinical development, leading to the payment of an agreed milestone.
 
This collaboration project was initiated in March 2008. Evotec combined high throughput screening and its proprietary fragment-based drug discovery platform to identify novel compounds active against a protease target, which were then further optimised with Ono to generate a candidate suitable for pre-clinical development.
 
Dr Mario Polywka, Chief Operating Officer of Evotec, commented: “We are extremely pleased that we have collaborated with Ono Pharmaceutical on this important project and delivered a pre-clinical candidate. The teams from Ono and Evotec have enjoyed an excellent interaction and relationship throughout the collaboration which has helped meet this goal. This achievement clearly demonstrates the value we bring to our alliance partners in the area of drug discovery. We look forward to continuing working closely with our colleagues at Ono.”
 
“This pre-clinical candidate is an important member of our development pipeline and we have high expectations for it. During the entire project we could count on the access to various technologies and on the knowledge, but in particular on the drug discovery expertise of our colleagues from Evotec. They are an integrated part of our drug discovery strategy”, said Dr Kazuhito Kawabata, Managing Director, Research Headquarters at Ono.