Evotec and Crohn's & Colitis Foundation Enter Agreement to Advance Drug Discovery

Evotec SE has joined forces with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, the leading non-profit organisation focused on both research and patient support for inflammatory bowel disease, which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. 

Under the collaboration, Evotec joins forces with the Foundation’s IBD Therapeutics Incubator programme that facilitates collaboration between the Foundation, academic researchers, and industry partners to translate groundbreaking basic research that was performed by academic researchers and identified by the Foundation into medical innovations for IBD patients. 

Dr Matthias Evers, Chief Business Officer of Evotec, commented: “Mission-driven foundations like the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation are an essential part of the healthcare ecosystem as they drive medical progress in areas of significant unmet need that would otherwise not be pursued. As we join forces within the Foundation in this second collaboration, we are fully aligned on our mission to create access to novel therapeutics and look forward to leveraging both Evotec’s translational experience as well as our fully integrated drug discovery powerhouse within the Foundation’s IBD Therapeutics Incubator.” 

The collaboration leverages Evotec’s end-to-end integrated R&D platform to advance drug discovery for two innovative drug targets that address major unmet medical needs of patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis: Fibrosis, the excessive accumulation of scar tissue in the intestinal wall, and impaired intestinal barrier function, which leads to increased intestinal permeability, also known as “leaky gut”. 

“We are excited about this collaboration with Evotec as part of the Foundation’s IBD Therapeutics Incubator because it will transform ideas to therapeutic product opportunities and scientific research into patient solutions,” said Andrés Hurtado Lorenzo, PhD, Senior Vice President, Translational Research & IBD Ventures at the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation. “We’re actually driving research from idea to therapeutic product opportunity.”