Evotec SE announced that the company has extended and expanded its integrated multi-target drug discovery agreement with data-driven biotech creation firm, Related Sciences (RS), to continue to grow their joint portfolio of drug development candidates through 2030, leveraging Evotec’s industry-leading capabilities across the full R&D continuum.
Launched in early 2021, the Evotec-RS partnership brings together a unique set of complementary capabilities to efficiently select, discover, and develop new, precisely targeted medicines for unmet patient needs. By combining RS’ unique Facets opportunity selection engine and decentralised team science model, with Evotec’s comprehensive platform of integrated drug discovery services and advanced AI/ML capabilities, the parties jointly progress large portfolios of related programmes from target to clinic and then share the economic value created.
To bolster the growing portfolio of more than 15 discovery-stage assets, the partners are expanding the collaboration to include Evotec’s leading-edge capabilities in covalent inhibitor discovery, leveraging and building upon Evotec’s custom covalent libraries and novel screening approaches to discover an exciting new class of highly potent and selective covalent medicines for eligible targets.
In addition to substantial investment from RS and its companies to finance all Evotec-led research and discovery efforts across the portfolio of promising new drug programmes, Evotec is eligible to receive milestones, royalties, and a founding equity stake in all RS assets developed under the partnership.
Dr Craig Johnstone, chief operating officer of Evotec, said: “We are delighted to expand and extend this unique and transformative partnership with Related Sciences. Through best-in-class, fully integrated interdisciplinary science, AI/ML-enabled target selection and drug design, and joint project leadership and portfolio management, Evotec and Related Sciences are well positioned to generate novel, high quality treatments for patients with significant unmet medical needs.”
Adam Kolom, cofounder and CEO at Related Sciences, said: “Our unique data science, technology, and risk-optimization platforms at Related Sciences combine beautifully with Evotec’s best-in-class integrated drug discovery capabilities to create a powerful new model for hyper-efficient, scalable discovery of important new medicines for patients. We are excited to continue our collaborative work in this partnership, including adding new world-class capabilities for the discovery of covalent inhibitors to our growing, multi-modality portfolios.”
Related Sciences (RS) builds and manages a new class of risk-optimized biotech companies. By re-engineering every aspect of biotech’s traditional operating and investment model from the ground-up, RS systematically mitigates the biggest historical sources of risk and inefficiency and creates a new, significantly less risky way to invest in the discovery of valuable new medicines for patients.
Evotec is a life science company with a unique business model that delivers on its mission to discover and develop highly effective therapeutics and make them available to the patients.
