Evotec SE announced that its partner Bayer AG has decided to advance a further programme from the endometriosis multi-target alliance into clinical Phase I development. Evotec will receive a milestone payment of € 2 m upon first dosing in the Phase I clinical trial and may be eligible for further significant clinical and sales milestones as well as royalties depending on the future progress during clinical development and potential commercialisation of a drug in the future.
The companies entered into their endometriosis multi-target discovery alliance in October 2012 with the aim to discover three clinical candidates. So far, the alliance generated six pre-clinical candidates, of which a fourth has now progressed into Phase I. Bayer advanced the first programme into a Phase II trial in refractory chronic cough in 2018. The Phase II study yielded positive results which met all of the targeted endpoints. For more information about this Bayer/Evotec alliance also see “White Paper on Bayer/Evotec Alliance”.
Dr Werner Lanthaler, Chief Executive Officer of Evotec, commented: “We are very pleased that the excellent collaboration between Bayer and Evotec has now officially surpassed the ambitious initial target by delivering a fourth clinical drug candidate. The candidates we have identified and developed together are performing extremely well and hold great potential, most likely also beyond the initially surveyed indications.”