Evotec and Indivumed said today they will partner to develop new precision therapeutics for colorectal cancer (CRC), through a collaboration whose value was not disclosed.
Over an initial two-year period, the companies plan to use Evotec’s PanHunter bioinformatics analysis platform and its small molecule and antibody discovery platforms, as well as the CRC cohort of Indivumed’s IndivuType global multi-omics cancer database.
PanHunter is an integrated data analytics platform designed to facilitate the analysis and interpretation of large ‘omics’ data sets.
IndivuType is designed to support the identification and validation of new molecular drug targets and biomarkers, patient stratification and cohort design for clinical trials, as well as multiple molecular aspects in basic and clinical research.
“The access to IndivuType will allow us to identify targets that are matched to CRC subpopulations which have been categorized due to molecular phenotypes and are thus expected to deliver more effective and durable drugs,” Evotec CSO Cord Dohrmann, PhD, said in a statement.
Evotec said Individumed’s commitment to generating high quality and extensive cancer patient data complemented its expertise in analyzing multi-omics data and developing novel platforms to aid the discovery of first-in-class clearly differentiated small molecule and antibody therapeutics.
“Our partnership with Evotec fits well with realizing our vision of using the multi-omics data within IndivuType to generate new precision medicine therapeutics,” added Indivumed Founder and CEO Prof. Hartmut Juhl, MD, PhD. “We are excited about the prospect of identifying novel drug targets and biomarkers that will help advance and transform CRC patient care.”
Evotec has made an undisclosed upfront payment to Indivumed for access to the CRC patient cohort of the IndivuType database. Both companies have agreed to jointly invest in data analysis, target identification, validation, and drug discovery. Evotec has agreed to oversee subsequent partnering of the programs and/or the platform.
