Evotec, Odyssey Launch R&D Partnership in Autoimmune, Inflammatory Diseases

Editor’s Take: Acceleration of early-stage research can help to more efficiently generate and advance novel medicines.

Evotec and Odyssey Therapeutics have a new, strategic R&D collaboration focusing on potential treatments for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

Odyssey’s deep expertise in autoimmune and inflammatory disease biology combines in this partnership with Evotec’s discovery infrastructure and compound libraries. These proprietary tools have made Evotec an industry leader in this realm of drug discovery.

What Evotec and Odyssey Will Contribute

In the collaboration, Odyssey is leveraging Evotec’s integrated, data-driven discovery platform. Evotec will also share its advanced screening capabilities and AI-enabled data science technologies. In this way, both companies can discover and validate differentiated small molecule drug candidates in several high-value disease targets.

The partnership combines high-throughput experimentation with machine learning-driven analysis. This encourages accelerated identification of validated hit series, and enables rapid progression of therapeutic programs that may hold promise.

Evotec Chief Scientific Officer Cord Dohrmann, PhD, said discovery increasingly depends on deep disease biology integration with advanced experimental approaches. And the bottom line is that it all has the potential to transform standards of care.

“This collaboration with Odyssey illustrates well Evotec’s strategy in applying integrated discovery platform technologies to complex disease areas,” Dohrmann said. “We aim to generate differentiated, validated starting points for Odyssey to develop into new therapies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.”

R&D Seen As Crucial Step in Process

Ultimately, the two companies combined hope to accelerate early-stage research through their complementary scientific and technological strengths. By doing so, they may be able to more efficiently generate and advance novel medicines.

While numeric financial information is not known, Evotec is eligible under the terms of the agreement to receive milestone payments. Nominally, these are for successful delivery of validated hit series for each target. Such an arrangement, the companies say, aligns value creation with successful discovery outcomes.