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Nuevolution Announces License Agreement with Merck

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Copenhagen, Denmark, February 21, 2014 / B3C newswire / – Nuevolution A/S today announced that it has entered an exclusive license agreement with a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, for small molecule compounds targeting an undisclosed intracellular target for use as leads in Merck’s drug discovery and development.  

Under terms of the agreement, Merck will gain exclusive rights for the further development and commercialization of the compounds. This is the second agreement between Nuevolution and Merck. Nuevolution will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and milestone payments for certain preclinical, clinical and agreed upon commercial milestones.  In addition, Nuevolution is eligible to receive royalties on the commercial sales of approved products.  Further financial details were not disclosed.

With this agreement, Nuevolution delivers on its new strategy to transform from a technology platform biotech company to a lead compound development company, providing novel products to improve future health treatments for patients.

Nuevolution applies its Chemetics® platform to identify small molecule drug candidates for therapeutically important targets. Chemetics® uses proprietary innovative DNA labelling to allow small molecule screening at an unprecedented scale for lead discovery. The technology allows efficient screening of billions of molecules against biological targets. Nuevolution has patented its Chemetics® technology and holds a strong validated patent portfolio within the technology field. In its existing collaborations and internal pipeline development, Nuevolution has successfully addressed several challenging targets including protein-protein interactions by the identification of drug-like small molecules.

“This agreement is the first pre-clinical compound out-licensing agreement for Nuevolution. It marks the immediate realization of our chosen strategy to both offer access to our technology as well as out-license leads identified by the use of the Chemetics® platform” said Alex Gouliaev, CEO of Nuevolution A/S and continued, “We are very pleased to see that the compounds will be developed further by Merck.”

Stig Løkke Pedersen, Chairman of Nuevolution A/S adds: “looking at our deal track record, Chemetics® has provided us with a commercially proven lead discovery engine. The out-licensing of compounds represents the best future source of sustainable growth for the company. It is very encouraging to see existing partnerships develop into long term relationships.”

  About Nuevolution Nuevolution is a leading small molecule lead discovery company founded in 2001 and based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company has developed Chemetics®, a unique, patent protected hybrid of proven wet chemistry and molecular biology, which represents the ultimate fragment, based drug discovery technology. Chemetics® enables rapid oligonucleotide e.g. DNA encoded synthesis of up to billions of chemically diverse drug-like small molecule compounds and the efficient screening of these, facilitating the identification of potent drug leads at unprecedented speed and scale.

Nuevolution partners its technology with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and has entered into drug discovery agreements with Merck, Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cancer Research Technology and The Institute of Cancer Research. Furthermore, Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis have entered technology licensing agreements with Nuevolution. Nuevolution participates in a scientific joint venture consortium (Nuevolution, Duke University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Lexicon Pharmaceuticals) focusing on GPCR’s, and Nuevolution is currently in the optimization phase for compounds identified under a joint venture consortium between Nuevolution, EpiTherapeutics, ExpreS2ion Biotechnologies and BRIC focusing on epigenetics.

Nuevolution has demonstrated the power of Chemetics® by identification of highly potent and drug like novel ligands with the potential to address major unmet medical needs across a range of therapeutic areas and target classes. Nuevolution’s internal programs are focused on therapeutically important targets within inflammation and oncology.

Nuevolution is a privately owned company by key Scandinavian investors, including SEB Venture Capital, Sunstone Capital, Industrifonden, SLS Invest, Novo Ventures and Innoventus Life Sciences.

Chemetics® is a registered trademark of Nuevolution.

Chemetics® is a patented technology of Nuevolution: EP1402024, US7,727,713, EP1487978, US7,413,854, EP1756277, EP1608748, US 7,915,201, EP1558744, AU2003273792, CN-ZL20038010476, HKHK1082742, IN213390, IL167531, JP4895608, ZA2005/02624, NZ538993, SG111515, US8,206,901, US7,704,925, EP1957644,EP07114663.3, EP10184311.8, US12/330,709, EP08169346.7, US12/179,323, EP03766117.0, US10/523,006, US10/539,288, US13/179,283, EP09154197.9, AU2011226815, CA2,544,153, CN201210222023.8, EP10183942.1, EP10184069.2, HK11107861.8, HK11107866.3, IL207672, IL207673, IN178/MUMNP/2007, JP2010-226107, JP2013-155967, US11/402,957, US13/455,223, US10/572,644, EP10192716.8, EP10192717.6, US12/095,778, EP09765460.2, US12/999,267, EP11720372.9, IN9924/DELNP/2012, US13/641,588.

For further enquiries about Nuevolution please contact:

Alex Haahr Gouliaev Chief Executive Officer Nuevolution A/S Phone: +45 7020 0987 ahg@nuevolution.com