Evotec and Takeda Enter into Multi-RNA Target Alliance

Evotec and Takeda announced on March 22, 2021 that they have entered into a multi-RNA target alliance to discover and develop RNA-targeting small-molecule therapeutics for targets that are difficult to address with more typical approaches.

Through the agreement, Evotec will receive research funding along with discovery, pre-clinical, clinical, commercial, and sales milestone payments of up to $160 million per program, Evotec said in a company press release. Evotec will also be entitled to tiered royalties on the net sales of any products from the collaboration.

The companies will work together to identify and develop small molecules using Evotec’s RNA-targeting platform to classify RNA sequences with small molecule ligands that can be developed into potential first-in-class therapeutics, according to the press release.

“Many highly validated targets have proven to be intractable via conventional protein targeting approaches. For this reason, Evotec has been pioneering RNA-targeting strategies and approaches for quite some time,” said Cord Dohrmann, chief scientific officer, Evotec, in the press release. “We are very excited about the opportunity to collaborate with Takeda in this field as both companies share the vision to jointly develop small-molecule therapeutics against high-value RNA targets that will deliver long awaited therapeutics.”

“Takeda recognizes targeting RNA with small molecules as a promising new modality that has tremendous potential for much needed medicines for patients through modulating historically undruggable targets,” added Larry Hamann, head, Drug Discovery Sciences, Takeda, in the press release. “We are excited to be working with Evotec and their impressive capabilities.”

Source: Evotec