Evotec Enters Partnership with Quantro Therapeutics

• QUANTRO EXPLOITS INNOVATIVE FUNCTIONAL-GENETIC AND TRANSCRIPTOMIC TECHNOLOGIES TO ADDRESS “UNDRUGGABLE” TARGETS
• EVOTEC TO PROVIDE HIT IDENTIFICATION SERVICES FOR QUANTRO’S PROPRIETARY ANTI-TUMOUR PROJECTS
• EVOTEC JOINS BOEHRINGER INGELHEIM VENTURE FUND AS SEED INVESTOR IN QUANTRO

HAMBURG, GERMANY / ACCESSWIRE / July 21, 2020 / Evotec SE (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, MDAX/TecDAX, ISIN: DE0005664809) announced today that the Company has entered into a comprehensive partnership with the recently established QUANTRO Therapeutics GmbH (“QUANTRO”), a research-based biotech company based in Vienna, Austria, that strives to discover and develop novel therapeutics interfering with disease-causing transcriptional programmes in cancer and other diseases.

QUANTRO will combine and exploit innovative functional-genetic and transcriptomic technologies to generate an unprecedented drug discovery pipeline transforming the precision and scope of cell-based compound screens. By introducing “Transcriptional Fingerprinting” to drug discovery, QUANTRO intends to revamp the scope of pharmacologic interventions in a variety of cellular, target and disease contexts. A prime focus will be the discovery and development of drug candidates blocking the activity of oncogenic transcription factors, a class of particularly promising therapeutic targets that has so far been deemed “undruggable”.

Founded by Dr Stefan Ameres and Dr Johannes Zuber as a spin-off of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (“IMBA”) and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (“IMP”), QUANTRO is headed by Chief Executive Officer Dr Dieter Nachtigall.

Evotec will provide hit identification services for QUANTRO’s proprietary anti-tumour projects. Furthermore, Evotec joins Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund GmbH (“BIVF”) in QUANTRO’s seed financing round. Both companies have acquired equal minority stakes in QUANTRO and will be represented on QUANTRO’s Supervisory Board by Dr Dirk Ullmann (Evotec) and Dr Sebastian Kreuz (BIVF), respectively.

Dr Werner Lanthaler, Chief Executive Officer of Evotec, commented: “QUANTRO is a very promising academic spin-off company with great potential to lead the way in time-resolved RNA sequencing with a potentially ground-breaking technology to address ‘undruggable’ drug targets. Through our partnership and equity investment, we will further validate QUANTRO’s approach and hope to be able to open many new doors across a broad range of therapeutic modalities together in the future.”

Dr Dieter Nachtigall, Chief Executive Officer of QUANTRO, said: “QUANTRO Therapeutics has designed and set up a new discovery approach and technology platform based on world-leading scientific expertise by our founders and excellent support from our highly committed corporate venture partners. We are extremely motivated and ambitious to start operations in our facilities at the Vienna StartUp Labs and turn our vision of identifying and developing new anti-cancer agents with breakthrough potential into a reality.”

Dr Sebastian Kreuz, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, added: “The BIVF focuses on groundbreaking therapeutic approaches and technologies that have the potential to advance patient care in areas of high unmet medical need. We are looking forward to supporting QUANTRO and its dedicated founders to apply time-resolved RNA sequencing in an industrialised setting with the aim to unlock transcription factors as a highly promising target class for drug discovery in oncology and other disease areas.”

No financial details of the agreement were disclosed.

ABOUT QUANTRO THERAPEUTICS GMBH
QUANTRO Therapeutics (“QUANTRO”) is a research-based entity that strives to discover and develop novel therapeutics interfering with disease-causing transcriptional programs in cancer and other diseases. QUANTRO will assemble a highly innovative drug-discovery pipeline that employs time-resolved RNA sequencing and comparative transcriptomics to identify and develop drug candidates interfering with transcriptional regulators. The first focus will be on cancer associated transcription factors which so far have been unamenable to pharmacologic intervention. QUANTRO was founded as a spin-off of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (“IMBA”) and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (“IMP”), both located in Vienna, Austria. Seed investors are Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund and Evotec. For more information: www.quantro-tx.com.

Contact QUANTRO Therapeutics GmbH
Dr Dieter Nachtigall, CEO
Mail: dieter.nachtigall@quantro-tx.com

Media Contact
MC Services AG
Katja Arnold, Andreas Jungfer, Shaun Brown
Phone: +49 89 210228 0
Mail: quantro@mc-services.eu

ABOUT BOEHRINGER INGELHEIM VENTURE FUND
Created in 2010, the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund GmbH (BIVF) invests in groundbreaking therapeutics-focused biotechnology companies to drive innovation in biomedical research. BIVF is searching for significant enhancements in patient care through pioneering science and its clinical translation by building long-term relationships with scientists and entrepreneurs. BIVF’s focus is to target unprecedented therapeutic concepts addressing high medical needs in immuno-oncology, in regenerative medicine or infectious diseases. These may include novel platform technologies to address so far undruggable targets, new generation vaccines and/or new biological entities, such as oncolytic virotherapy as well as Digital Health.
BIVF takes an active role within its portfolio companies – delivering significant added value through its own extensive drug discovery, scientific and managerial expertise. BIVF has € 250 million under management and currently supervises a portfolio of 29 companies. For more information, please visit www.boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com.

ABOUT IMP, IMBA AND THE VIENNA BIOCENTER
The Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna is a basic biomedical research institute largely sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim. With over 200 scientists from 40 countries, the IMP is committed to scientific discovery of fundamental molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying complex biological phenomena.
www.imp.ac.at

IMBA – Institute of Molecular Biotechnology – is one of the leading biomedical research institutes in Europe focusing on cutting-edge stem cell technologies, functional genomics, and RNA biology. IMBA is a subsidiary of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the leading national sponsor of non-university academic research.
www.imba.oeaw.ac.at/

Both IMP and IMBA are part of the Vienna BioCenter, one of Europe’s most dynamic life science hubs with 1,800 employees from 70 countries in four research institutes, three universities and around 30 biotech companies.
www.viennabiocenter.org

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 3,000 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.

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

SOURCE: Evotec AG via EQS Newswire

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