Date: 2015-01-15
Type of information: Milestone
Compound: new targets for Alzheimer’s disease drug discovery and development
Company: Evotec (Germany) J&J (USA - NJ)
Therapeutic area: Neurodegenerative diseases
Type agreement: R&D
Action mechanism:
Disease: Alzheimer’s disease
Details: * On November 8, 2013, Evotec has announced a collaboration with the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center in California to identify new targets for Alzheimer’s disease drug discovery and development. Under the terms of the agreement, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Evotec will work together to discover and develop novel treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.Termed TargetAD (Alzheimer’s disease), the collaboration will seek to identify new drug targets for discovery of novel treatment approaches to Alzheimer’s disease. This collaboration will use Evotec’s proprietary TargetAD database. This database is a customised system providing information on the link between molecular and cellular changes in brain tissue with Alzheimer’s disease progression. This database was set up in a multi-year research programme, applying histological, cellular and in vivo target validation procedures.
Financial terms: Janssen will fund target discovery research via a combination of defined research payments and progress-related milestones over the next three years. Janssen will have the opportunity to internalise selected targets and therapeutic candidates from the TargetAD database and progress them into pre-clinical and clinical development. Janssen will reimburse up to $ 10 million in FTE-based research costs and make pre-clinical, clinical, regulatory and commercial payments up to a maximum of between approximately $ 125 million to $ 145 million per programme upon achieving agreed-upon milestones. In addition, Evotec will receive royalties on future sales of any products that may result from the alliance.
Latest news: * On January 15, 2015, Evotec announced the achievement of several small, but very important milestones in its TargetAD collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceuticals for the identification and selection of novel targets from Evotec’s TargetAD database and for the transition of targets into the drug discovery process. These milestones were reached in 2014 which will be recognised in the financial year 2014. These selections were achieved under the agreement between Evotec and Janssen, facilitated by Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC, signed in November 2013. Under the terms of the agreement, Janssen and Evotec continue to collaborate to develop new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease. Janssen has the option to internalize selected targets and therapeutic candidates and progress them into pre-clinical and clinical development. Janssen funds target drug discovery research via a combination of defined research payments and progress-related milestones. * On July 30, 2014, Evotec announced the successful achievement of the first milestones in its TargetAD collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceuticals for the identification and selection of three selected targets from the TargetAD database.
