Nuevolution agrees multi-target collaboration with Janssen Biotech

Danish drug discovery company Nuevolution will collaborate with Janssen Biotech, a Johnson & Johnson company, on the discovery and development of new medical entities for the treatment of oncological, infectious and inflammatory diseases.

Within the collaboration, Nuevolution will apply its drug discovery platform Chemetics to discover and advance drug candidates against targets of interest to Janssen.

Chemetics is a patent protected hybrid of proven wet chemistry and molecular biology which, according to Nuevolution, represents the ultimate fragment based drug discovery platform for both identification and optimisation of hit to candidate compounds. It enables rapid oligonucleotide e.g. DNA encoded synthesis of billions of chemically diverse drug-like small molecule compounds, and the efficient screening and optimisation of them, facilitating the identification of potent drug leads at unprecedented speed and scale.

Under the terms of the agreement, Nuevolution will receive an unspecified upfront payment, research funding and will be eligible for milestone payments if it achieves specified research, development and commercial milestones. In addition, the firm will receive royalty payments on the net sale of products that may be commercialised as a result of the collaboration.

'We are excited about entering into the extensive collaboration with Janssen,' said Alex Gouliaev, CEO of Nuevolution. 'We are looking forward to an excellent working relationship with their dedicated research and development teams.'

Nuevolution has also entered into agreements with Merck & Co, Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim and Cancer Research Technology.