Evotec has received a US$5m milestone payment from Bristol Myers Squibb following the US Food and Drug Administration’s acceptance of an Investigational New Drug application for a cereblon E3 ligase modulator developed under their strategic collaboration.
The Hamburg-based biopharmaceutical company confirmed that a phase 1 clinical trial for the CELMoD candidate is expected to begin in 2026.
The milestone reflects continued progress in the partnership, which targets high-need patient populations through novel protein degradation therapies.
The collaboration, which began in 2018 and was expanded in 2022, combines Evotec’s multi-omics screening and AI-supported drug design with Bristol Myers Squibb’s CELMoD library. The goal is to identify molecular glue degraders for oncology and other therapeutic areas.
Cord Dohrmann, Chief Scientific Officer of Evotec, said: “We are excited to have reached this important achievement in our collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb, and to move one step closer to bringing the first compound of our molecular glue degrader pipeline to the clinic. This IND acceptance represents not only a major scientific and regulatory milestone but also validates the strength of our collaboration and emphasizes the enormous potential for delivering multiple first-in-class products to market.”
Molecular glue degraders work by inducing interactions between an E3 ubiquitin ligase and a target protein, leading to its degradation. Unlike conventional small molecules, which only act while bound to a receptor, molecular glues can repeatedly trigger degradation, offering longer-lasting effects and expanding the druggable proteome.
Evotec’s PanOmics and PanHunter platforms support the selection of promising CELMoDs by integrating high-throughput proteomics and transcriptomics with advanced data analytics.
