Just two months after it bought French pharma Sanofi’s anti-infectives unit, Evotec has penned a new deal, this time with Danish firm Novo Nordisk.
The two companies are set to combine its resources to develop treatments for a range of diseases, including Novo’s flagship therapy area diabetes, where it will discover and develop small molecule therapies to treat the disease.
Obesity is another area that’s of interest to the recently formed partnership, along with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), cardiovascular disease and diabetic kidney disease.
Evotec’s part in this new deal will see the biotech apply its drug discovery platform, especially in ligand-based design, to create novel, safe and efficacious products.
Novo on the other hand, will take advantage of Evotec’s INDiGO platform to move the selected candidates through pre-clinical testing.
Mario Polywka, Chief Operating Officer of Evotec, said that the new venture will be one made of a “powerful combination” due to Novo’s leading position in diabetes and Evotec’s discovery and development platform.
Meanwhile, Dr Marcus Schindler, senior vice president, Global Drug Discovery, Novo Nordisk, added: “Evotec is a highly esteemed company in the field of small molecules and we are very excited about the collaboration.
“Novo Nordisk is confident that this will open up new possibilities in small molecule drug discovery and development targeting diabetes and obesity with the potential to make a difference for people living with these serious diseases.”
Novo is already gaining ground in the fields of diabetes and NASH. Just earlier this week the company reported positive results of its oral diabetes drug semaglutide.
It also recently bought biotech Ziylo, with the aim of developing the world’s first glucose responsive insulin.