Biology and chemistry discovery and development agreement ’worth €5 million’
Hamburg, Germany based Evotec OAI AG with an office in Oxford, UK and Prolysis Ltd of Oxford UK have entered into a three-year discovery and development worth about Eur 5 million initially.
Prolysis, a biotech dedicated to discovery and development of antibiotics will gain access to more than 20 man-years of dedicated expert chemistry resource. The deal could be extended into development, increasing its value to about Eur 10 million.
Evotec OAI AG provides integrated high-value-added drug discovery services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. The team will apply its biology, medicinal and computational chemistry skills to design and synthesise compounds against selected Prolysis targets.
Evotec OAI aims to optimise the pharmacological and ADME/Tox properties of candidates in this integrated biology and chemistry collaboration using its early ADME/Tox platform. Evotec OAI will receive fees for services as well as an equity stake in Prolysis.
In September 2001, Dr Edwin Moses, who had led Oxford Asymmetry International (OAI) from near start-up until its merger with Evotec Biosystems AG in 2000, joined Prolysis as Executive Chariman. Moses has been actively helping Prolysis to develop and commercialise its growing portfolio of intellectual property. President of Evotec OAI until June 2001 and is on the Supervisory Board.
Like OAI, Prolysis is an Oxford University spin-off founded two years ago by Professor Jeff Errington (now Chief Scientific Officer). Prolysis aims to use its innovative research techniques to identify and develop a new generation of antibiotics.
Keywords : Germany UK Evotec-OAI Prolysis Chemistry Biology Collaboration Antibiotics
