The German multinational Evotec recently closed many new deals, among which the acquisition of Aptuit for $ 300 millions. Aptuit is a research organisation with scientific expertise across drug discovery, pre-clinical testing and both drug substance and drug product manufacturing. The company completed more than a thousand projects in 2016 (for over 400 customers) in its three state-of-the-art discovery, development and manufacturing facilities in Europe (Verona, Italy; Basel, Switzerland; and Oxford, United Kingdom).

Evotec also announced a strategic collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology ScreeningPort, that will provide access to advanced genetic characterisation techniques and innovative quality control procedures to support Evotec’s patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) platform. The further collaboration signed with Censo Biotechnologies will source and provide patient-derived iPSC to support the platform.

LAB150 is the new transformational Toronto-based partnership signed with MaRS Innovation that will give Canadian academic institutions and teaching hospitals access to the world-class infrastructure and drug discovery expertise of Evotec and pair it with cutting-edge drug discovery projects emerging from the 15 member institutions.

Evotec and Storm Therapeutics will jointly develop new small molecule epigenetic drugs for oncology and other therapeutic areas. The focus will be on a range of newly discovered RNA modulating enzyme targets.