Evotec Multiple Sclerosis Drug Studies Receive €5 Million in New Funding

Funding for continued research and development into understanding, treating, and eventually curing Multiple Sclerosis continues to accelerate. Evotec AG, a German company that specializes in providing drug discovery resources to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and learning institutions, has just announced the launch of its line-up of groundbreaking studies into MS — an inflammatory neurodegenerative disease that affects the protective covering of nerve cells, leading to disability and loss of quality of life.

Evotec’s three new investigations from the Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum and the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf have timeframes ranging from 1.5 to 3 years, and are expected to cost nearly €5 million. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research will be funding these projects, which will focus on tolerance induction, cytokine regulation, and neuroprotection in Multiple Sclerosis patients.

The company’s strategy is to deploy a number of their discovery platforms, comprehensive project management, and leading market presence to find out which of today’s pharmaceutical pipeline products fit these new techniques for the benefit of MS patients.

For their part, Evotech maintains several well-established working relationships with drug developers, many of whom are active in the MS sector. Their partners include Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, CHDI, Genentech, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, MedImmune/AstraZeneca, Roche and UCB.

In other news regarding exciting, potential therapeutic solutions for MS, scientists from the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research are working on a dendritic cell vaccine against this disease. The findings from this research may also be applied to finding solutions for other autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes.