COPENHAGEN, June 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Nuevolution A/S today announced that it has entered into a drug discovery collaboration with Merck & Co. Inc.
Nuevolution will apply its proprietary Chemetics® drug discovery technology to identify novel small molecule leads against several drug targets of interest to Merck. The Chemetics® platform uses innovative DNA labeling to allow fragment-based drug screening at an unprecedented scale.
Nuevolution will screen multiple multi-million member diverse fragment based screening libraries for hit identification. Through the design, synthesis and screening of target focused Chemetics® follow-up libraries, the parties will also work together to perform hit-to-lead optimization.
Under the terms of the agreement, Merck will provide Nuevolution with an upfront payment, research funding, and milestone payments as candidate molecules progress through preclinical and clinical development and onto the market. In addition, Nuevolution is eligible to receive royalties on the commercial sales of approved products. Further financial details were not disclosed.
“We are delighted that a company of Merck’s stature has chosen to enter into collaboration with Nuevolution to access our fragment-based Chemetics® platform, which we believe has the potential to transform small molecule lead discovery.” said Alex Gouliaev, CEO of Nuevolution A/S, and continued: “Working with Merck’s world class team of scientists is an opportunity to further strengthen our approach and we look forward to an exciting and fruitful outcome of our collaboration.”
About Nuevolution
Nuevolution is a leading drug discovery company founded in 2001 and based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company has developed Chemetics®, a unique, patent protected hybrid of proven wet chemistry and molecular biology which represents the ultimate fragment based drug discovery technology. Chemetics® enables rapid synthesis and DNA-tagging of hundreds of millions of chemically diverse drug-like small molecule compounds and the efficient screening of these, facilitating the identification of potent drug leads at unprecedented quantity, quality and speed compared to existing drug discovery technologies.
Nuevolution partners its technology with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and is also developing an internal pipeline by applying Chemetics® to validated cancer and cardiovascular targets. Nuevolution has demonstrated the power of Chemetics® by identifying highly potent and drug like novel ligands with the potential to address major unmet medical needs across a range of therapeutic areas and target classes.
Nuevolution is a privately owned company and has raised EUR 37 million in financing from key Scandinavian investors, including SEB Venture, Sunstone Capital, SLS Venture and Novo A/S.
For more information about Nuevolution A/S, please visit the company’s website http://www.nuevolution.com
Source: Nuevolution A/S
