Hamburg, Germany | Oxford, UK - Evotec AG (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, TecDAX 30) today announced that it has signed a research collaboration agreement with Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (a wholly owned subsidiary of DAIICHI SANKYO COMPANY, LIMITED), Tokyo, Japan, for medicinal chemistry and compound profiling.
 
A dedicated group of Evotec FTEs will work initially on two programmes for Daiichi to identify lead structures for further progression into clinical trials. Daiichi will take advantage of Evotec's expertise and full range of state-of-the-art medicinal chemistry capabilities including compound design, parallel synthesis, computational chemistry as well as ADMET services. In addition, Evotec will provide assay development and compound profiling skills to determine the activity and selectivity of the compounds generated.
 
"Evotec is an industry leader in the supply of medicinal chemistry services to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries," commented Dr Hirofumi Terasawa, General Manager, Medicinal Chemistry Research Laboratory of Daiichi. "With their depth and level of scientific expertise, their track record, and their outstanding communications skills, Evotec is a trusted partner and we look forward to working with their team in developing novel compounds to treat unmet medical needs."
 
Dr Mark Ashton, Executive Vice President Business Development Services at Evotec, said: "We are very pleased that Daiichi has selected Evotec as their partner of choice to support them in the advancement of this new class of compounds. This agreement serves as another confirmation of our expertise in both, chemistry and biology for small molecule drug discovery and our commitment to supporting Japanese Pharmaceutical companies such as Daiichi."
 
Contact: Anne Hennecke, Director, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, Evotec AG, Phone: +49-40-56081-286, anne.hennecke@evotec.com