Evotec to hire across all sites with new €90m Novo investment
Werner Lanthaler, CEO of Evotec, told Outsourcing-Pharma the €90m ($96m) investment will be “used for strategic growth of what we're doing, and to expand innovation projects within Evotec's R&D.”
This includes hiring of new staff and buying new equipment across all of Evotec’s sites, he added.
In particular, the firm’s 20 or so Cure X and Target X initiatives will be addressed, which span a range of indications from neurological to metabolic disease.
Lanthaler explained: “These initiatives are really academic translation. For example, we have a research partnership on neurological disease with Harvard, and another partnership with Yale.”
Novo A/S is the holding company in the Danish Novo Group, a family of independent companies owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Michael Shalmi, Managing Director of Large Investment at Novo commented “Supporting companies [like Evotec] provides more efficient solutions for the rapidly changing value chain in drug discovery and development.”
Multiple developments
Evotec has made several acquisitions and investments over the past six months, such as recently buying the UK-based ADMET services provider Cyprotex plc.
In January, the firm also launched a Toronto, Canada-based drug discovery company with MaRS Innovation, named Fibrocor Therapeutics LP.
Other deals the CRO made last month include with a German virtual biotech startup working on liver diseases, and a Japanese firm using ion channels for drug discovery.
“I think [Novo] went through Evotec’s business model, understood the combination of innovation and our highly innovative platform, and made a strategic move,” Lanthaler concluded.
With this investment, the Novo group now owns 8.9% of Evotec.
