Evotec said today it has acquired Bionamics, a German asset management company that focuses on translating academic and industry innovations into preclinical and clinical-phase experimental drugs. The price was not disclosed. 

The deal gives Evotec a portfolio of fully-funded development programs in multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases—projects that typically include an identified target and the respective drug candidates.

Founded in 2006, Bionamics manages NEU2, a consortium established to generate new treatments in neurodegenerative diseases, and supported by €40 million ($55 million) in public funds received since 2009. Half of that funding was obtained in August 2012 from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), extending NEU2 operations to 2017. The consortium combines public funding with private contributions to create an overall budget of at least €80 million ($110 million).

According to its website, Bionamics typically acquires or licenses pre-clinical assets, sells some of them to “new and appropriate customers,” and manages the rest toward development by outsourcing partners into clinical-stage compounds that can be commercialized by biopharmas. Bionamics employs three people and is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany.

Bionamics has attracted investors whose funds are intended to finance development of selected programs across major milestones or “value inflection points” such as proof-of-concept in pre-clinical models, IND-filing, and Phase-IIa execution. Investors can make project-specific investments as well as invest in the entire corporate project portfolio.

As part of the deal, Bionamics’ Managing Director Timm Jessen, Ph.D., returns to Evotec with responsibility for commercializing compounds within the EVT Innovate program. He will hold the new position of evp, business development, EVT Innovate a decade after leaving Evotec as CSO, a position he held from 1997 to 2004.

Evotec is a German drug discovery alliance and development partnership company that partners on long-term drug discovery collaborations with pharma giants that include AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, CHDI, Genentech, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and Ono Pharmaceutical. Evotec also has established development partnerships and product candidates—both in clinical and preclinical development—with Boehringer Ingelheim, MedImmune and Andromeda (Teva) in diabetes, with Janssen Pharmaceuticals in depression and with Roche in Alzheimer's disease.

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