Evotec Expands Oxfordshire Site into a Fully-Integrated R&D Centre Named ‘Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Campus’

• CREATES UNIQUE CO-LOCATED, FULLY-INTEGRATED, HIGH-CAPACITY R&D CENTRE
• ADDS IN VITRO PHARMACOLOGY AND EXPANDS PROTEIN SCIENCES
• CREATES CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR STRUCTURE-BASED DRUG DESIGN
• INCREASES GLOBAL CAPACITY FOR HIGH-VALUE INTEGRATED DRUG DISCOVERY AND COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT OFFERING

HAMBURG, GERMANY / ACCESSWIRE / November 12, 2020 / Evotec SE (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, MDAX/TecDAX, ISIN: DE0005664809) today announced the expansion of the Company’s existing campus based at Milton Park in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK, into a major, fully-integrated, co-located discovery and development centre to be named Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Campus. Adding a new building, which will house up to 100 biologists by the end of the year, will bring together all the key functions for cutting-edge and high-performance small molecule discovery and up to commercial development.

The Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Campus will boast the co-location of in vitro pharmacology and protein sciences, structural biology, drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, computational, synthetic, and medicinal chemistry, formulation sciences, development chemistry and API manufacture. The co-location of these critical scientific functions enables excellent communication and rapid and inventive problem-solving at the interfaces of disciplines as well as accelerating the speed of iterative cycles in the drug discovery and development processes, turning the site into a fully integrated R&D centre.

Evotec’s campus at Milton Park already benefits from the strong relationships and proximity with the Diamond Light Source at Harwell, making it a centre of excellence in structure-based drug design. The location also facilitates excellent partnership opportunities in the Oxford and UK-wide academic and biotech scene.

With over 600 employees on site, Evotec’s Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Campus now joins Evotec’s sites in Toulouse and Verona as one of three fully integrated powerhouses of capacity, capabilities and know-how in integrated R&D for the benefit of its partners.

Dr Craig Johnstone, Chief Operating Officer of Evotec, said: “Successful, fully-integrated drug discovery and development requires know-how and expertise as well as cutting-edge technologies and capabilities. We are delighted to extend our breadth of fully-integrated R&D sites with this extension to our capabilities at our Abingdon site, which we are proud to name after the X-ray crystallography technology leader and Nobel laureate: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Campus.”

About Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
Dorothy Hodgkin (née Crowfoot) was born in Cairo in 1910. She became interested in chemistry and in crystals at about the age of 10, and she became one of two girls who were allowed to join the boys doing chemistry at her school. She then went on to Oxford and Somerville College where she attended the special course in crystallography and decided to do research in X-ray crystallography. Having heard Bernal lecture on metals in Oxford, Dorothy Crowfoot went to Cambridge to work with J.D. Bernal. The fact that around that time Bernal was turning towards sterols settled her course.

Somerville gave her a research fellowship to be held for one year at Cambridge and the second at Oxford. Crowfoot returned to Somerville and remained there, except for brief intervals, for the remainder of her career. She quickly started to collect money for an X-ray apparatus and continued the X-ray analysis of natural products with a research focus on sterols and other biologically interesting molecules, including insulin and penicillin.

In 1946, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin took part in the meetings which led to the foundation of the International Union of Crystallography. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947, a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences in 1956, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston) in 1958. In 1964, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for solving the atomic structure of molecules such as penicillin and insulin, using X-ray crystallography.^[1]

ABOUT EVOTEC SE
Evotec is a drug discovery alliance and development partnership company focused on rapidly progressing innovative product approaches with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academics, patient advocacy groups and venture capitalists. We operate worldwide and our more than 3,400 employees provide the highest quality stand-alone and integrated drug discovery and development solutions. We cover all activities from target-to-clinic to meet the industry’s need for innovation and efficiency in drug discovery and development (EVT Execute). The Company has established a unique position by assembling top-class scientific experts and integrating state-of-the-art technologies as well as substantial experience and expertise in key therapeutic areas including neuronal diseases, diabetes and complications of diabetes, pain and inflammation, oncology, infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, fibrosis, rare diseases and women’s health. On this basis, Evotec has built a broad and deep pipeline of approx. 100 co-owned product opportunities at clinical, pre-clinical and discovery stages (EVT Innovate). Evotec has established multiple long-term alliances with partners including Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, CHDI, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Sanofi, Takeda, UCB and others. For additional information please go to www.evotec.com and follow us on Twitter @Evotec.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS
Information set forth in this press release contains forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements contained herein represent the judgement of Evotec as of the date of this press release. Such forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statements to reflect any change in our expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.

Media Contact Evotec SE:
Gabriele Hansen, SVP Head of Global Corporate Communications & Marketing, Phone: +49.(0)40.56081-255, gabriele.hansen@evotec.com

IR Contact Evotec SE:
Volker Braun, SVP Head of Global Investor Relations & ESG, Phone: +49.(0)40.56081-775, volker.braun@evotec.com

^[1] Sources: nobelprize.org; royalsocietypublishing.org

SOURCE: Evotec AG via EQS Newswire

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