IZB MARTINSRIED/MUNICH
payments, of up to a total of about $200 million to $300 million per product. In addition, Janssen will pay royalties on future sales of any products that result from this collaboration. The payments will be shared by Evotec and Harvard according to pre-agreed terms and Evotec will receive additional research support for discovery and early development work that will be conducted in collaboration with Janssen.
The CureBeta initiative was established by Harvard, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), and Evotec in 2011 to leverage the assets and expertise in industry and academia to identify and develop disease- state modifying therapeutic targets. As part of the initiative, Evotec’s Dr Cord Dohrmann and Harvard University Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Doug Melton, recognised leaders in the field of beta cell research, began their collaboration. During the initial period of the collaboration, Evotec, HHMI, and Harvard established new standards in beta cell regeneration in terms of assays and tools as well as novel high potential targets. Janssen Pharmaceuticals will provide industrial scope and scale as well as pharmaceutical development expertise and marketing capabilities.
Dr Cord Dohrmann, Chief Scientific Officer of Evotec, commented: “Our collaboration with Doug Melton’s laboratory has been extremely successful on multiple levels. We have not only achieved our scientific goals of creating a superior beta cell drug discovery platform and generating a deep pipeline of novel and exciting targets, but we have also established a new model of collaboration between academia and industry that has proven highly efficient and effective in accelerating innovative scientific development. Janssen Pharmaceuticals perfectly complements this effort, bringing in world- leading pharmaceutical development expertise as well as the necessary resources to execute on our mission to produce first-in- class therapeutics designed to restore beta cell mass and function.”
“Our collaboration with Evotec supports our mission of accelerating scientific research from the lab to the clinic,” said Isaac T. Kohlberg, Harvard’s chief technology development officer and head of its Office of Technology Development. “As the funding and licensing landscape has evolved in the pharmaceutical industry, we have evolved to identify new development strategies for our
32 sp2 Inter-Active September/October 2012
Modern and bright - part of the West II facility at IZB Martinsried.
research assets. This alliance with Janssen Pharmaceuticals represents an important step towards a real solution for the treatment of diabetes.”
Evotec is a drug discovery alliance and development partnership company focused on rapidly progressing innovative product approaches with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The company operates worldwide providing integrated drug discovery solutions covering all activities from target to clinic. The company has extensive experience and expertise in therapeutic areas such as neuroscience, pain, metabolic diseases, oncology and inflammation. It also has long-term discovery alliances with partners including Boehringer Ingelheim, CHDI, Genentech, Medimmune/AstraZeneca, and Ono Pharmaceutical, as well as existing development partnerships and product candidates both in clinical and preclinical development. These include partnerships with Boehringer Ingelheim, MedImmune and Andromeda (Teva) in the field of diabetes, and with Roche in the field of Alzheimer’s disease.
www.evotec.com
SuppreMol anti-IL-3 rheumatoid arthritis monoclonal antibody
Autoimmune disease specialist SuppreMol GmbH has formed a licensing agreement with the University Hospital of Regensburg to advance preclinical development of SM401, a humanised anti-IL-3 monoclonal antibody for early diagnosis and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The company will also further validate a highly sensitive human IL-3 diagnostic assay for patient stratification. In a murine model for RA, SuppreMol’s preclinical candidate SM401 has demonstrated that it significantly reduces
progression and severity of the disease. At the same time, levels of the inflammatory cytokines IL-6 and TNF-alpha, which are reduced by several established RA drugs, are also lowered. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that IL-3 concentrations were only elevated at the onset of arthritis and fell to low levels during the course of the disease in the animal model. Using the newly developed IL-3 diagnostic assay, SuppreMol expects to develop a biomarker for the stratification of RA patients. Through this early intervention approach, the company expects to stop progression of the autoimmune disease rather than simply treat the symptoms of inflammation. SuppreMol expects to begin clinical trials of SM401 in 2014. The anti-IL-3 monoclonal antibody was generated by the group of Professor Dr. Matthias Mack at Regensburg University Hospital - Internal Medicine II following the discovery that increased levels of IL-3 indicate early onset and activity of RA. Professor Mack is a member of SuppreMol’s Scientific Advisory Board.
Early development of SM401 is being funded by a grant of €1.37 million from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project was funded in Prof Mack’s laboratory through BayImmuNet, the Bayerisches Immuntherapie Netzwerk; the development of a therapeutic anti-IL-3 antibody including a highly sensitive IL-3 assay is supported by the BMBF within the Leading-Egde Cluster ‘m4 - Personalized Medicine and Targeted Therapies’ in Munich.
www.suppremol.com
Further information For further information on the activities of IZB and its member companies visit
www.izb-online.de
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