Hamburg, Germany – 18 March 2010: Evotec AG (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, TecDAX) today announced that it has signed an agreement with Hypha Discovery Ltd. Under the terms of the agreement, Evotec will be able to provide its screening clients with access to Hypha’s MycoDiverse™ natural product collection for use as part of its hit and lead identification services. Furthermore, following screening, Evotec could leverage its capabilities and expertise in natural product chemistry and medicinal chemistry to optimise promising hit compounds.
The MycoDiverse™ collection, which is unexploited in most therapeutic areas, contains samples of high chemical novelty. This, allied with Evotec’s recognised expertise and proprietary technologies in assay development, screening and medicinal chemistry, creates a comprehensive platform for lead generation via natural product screening.
Dr Liam Evans, Chief Executive Officer of Hypha Discovery stated: “Evotec is a world leading provider of high throughput screening services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and as such this strategic partnership provides new and exciting opportunities to find novel drug leads resulting from our breakthrough fungal fermentation technology."
Dr Mark Ashton, Executive Vice President, Business Development of Evotec commented: “We are continually looking at ways to enhance Evotec’s offering to its customers. We see access to Hypha’s high quality natural product collection as a logical step towards offering our customers further choices for lead identification. We feel that our ability to offer the screening of natural products is complementary to also providing access to our high quality, small molecule library.”
About Evotec AG
Evotec is a leader in the discovery and development of novel small molecule drugs with operational sites in Europe and Asia. The Company has built substantial drug discovery expertise and an industrialised platform that can drive new innovative small molecule compounds into the clinic. In addition, Evotec has built a deep internal knowledge base in the treatment of diseases related to neuroscience, pain, and inflammation. Leveraging these skills and expertise the Company intends to develop best-in-class differentiated therapeutics and deliver superior science-driven discovery alliances with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Evotec has long-term discovery alliances with partners including Boehringer Ingelheim, CHDI, Novartis, Ono Pharmaceutical and Roche. Evotec has product candidates in clinical development and a series of preclinical compounds and development partnerships, including for example a strategic alliance with Roche for the EVT 100 compound family, subtype selective NMDA receptor antagonists for use in treatment-resistant depression. For additional information please go to www.evotec.com.
About Hypha Discovery Ltd
Hypha is a natural products company, focusing on the production of biologically useful compounds from Higher Fungi, using proprietary stimulatory fermentation methods. The company collaborates with drug discovery companies through the supply of the MycoDiverse™ library, a collection of 10,000 extracts and fractions with unusually high chemical novelty. Hypha has a pipeline of oncology and anti-infective pre-clinical projects from the MycoDiverse™ library, led by the HD148 series of mTOR kinase inhibitors, a synthetic series inspired by the discovery of a unique family of anticancer compounds from a tropical mushroom. Based in London, the company also provides custom fermentation and compound purification contract services to other biotechnology companies. Please visit www.hyphadiscovery.co.uk for more information.
