Video: Introduction to Action Plan 2025

R&D efficiency

The need for sophisticated drug discovery tools and platforms with improved accuracy is highlighted by the fact that success rates of clinical trials remain at a low level. Following the Journal Biostatistics, only 13 to 14% of all drugs entering the clinic, throughout all disease areas, will ultimately be approved. In oncology, the success rate dropped to a devastating 3.4%. These figures, combined with increasing development costs and decreasing average sales underline that new and more doors need to be opened to improve success rates and to improve efficiency within the pharmaceutical industry.

AI/ ML & Precision Medicine

Based on many technological advances and new biological insights, the opportunity to change the odds and improve the success rates, has never been as clear and as achievable as today.

Actually, at Evotec, we believe that we are living in a golden age of technological advances. A few examples:

  • The ability to conduct single cell sequencing opened up a new world. Single cell sequencing re-defines cell identities as well as the disease status of individual cells. But it also enables the profiling of drug candidates with more granularity than ever before
  • iPSC technology changed the world when it comes to disease modeling. Patient-derived disease models have become the new gold standard in profiling drugs in the pre-clinic
  • Genome editing is a revolution in the field of gene therapy but it also has great impact on many aspects of drug discovery
  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning tools are changing the way drug discovery is conducted across the whole value chain. There is hardly any process that is not affected by AI/ML

Diligent and routine incorporation of these kind of technologies into the critical path of drug discovery will not only improve overall productivity but most importantly improve the quality of drugs in development.

Biologics Discovery & Manufacturing

Companies need flexible manufacturing solutions with the right capacity at the right time, smart, high-yielding processes to increase efficiency as well as cheaper and faster manufacture without any sacrifices to quality and safety. At the same time, new trends in drug development and manufacturing have emerged in recent years. Just – Evotec Biologics is using ML and AI tools to predict and improve manufacturability of protein based drugs as well as cutting-edge technologies to optimise manufacturing processes. Properly optimised drug products and manufacturing processes that are easily scalable are key to lower manufacturing costs and thus make important contributions to providing innovative drugs at affordable prices to patients.

Multimodality drug design

Our means of targeting difficult-to-treat targets are growing as the trend for multimodality increases – equipping the industry with an array of new approaches outside the traditional small molecule arena. The advent of monoclonal antibody therapies in the 1990s is of particular importance, as this technological advance has led to a major breakthrough in cancer treatment as well as further development of important immunotherapies such as CAR-T cells. Another key development in the 1990s was the introduction of RNA-based therapies with the first therapy being approved by the US FDA in 1998. Despite significant advances being made in these areas, there are still many diseases for which there is no cure. Stem cell therapies are holding great promise in this respect as they are anticipated to revolutionalise the treatment of a variety of currently untreatable conditions.

All these exciting new modalities offer new hope in the fight against undruggable targets. Adapting and being at the forefront of this research is key to maintaining a position in the ever-changing landscape of drug discovery. In fact, multimodality is just another term for opening new doors, and as our understanding of health and disease continuously improves and becomes more interdisciplinary, many new starting points for drug discovery are created. To be able to offer multimodality on our platform means that we can actually access these new development paths.

R&D Efficiency Platforms
From high quality stand-alone services to EVOiR&D

AI/ML & Precision Medicine Platforms
From molecular platforms via iPSCs to EVOpanOmics & EVOpanHunter

Biologics Design & Manufacturing
With EVOaccess from J.HALSM to J.POD®

Multimodality Drug Design
From small molecules & biologics to EVOcells & EVOgenes

Co-Ownership
EVOequity &
EVOroyalty

THE DATA-DRIVEN R&D AUTOBAHN TO CURES

Since 2009, Evotec has been shaping its business in line with/according to strategic frameworks called Action Plans. We started with “Action Plan 2012 – Focus and Grow” which focused on developing our core value R&D programmes, expanding our drug discovery business, and significantly reducing operating costs. After successfully building a solid foundation for future growth through this framework, we set ourselves the strategic goal to establish Evotec as an internationally leading provider of drug discovery solutions for the pharmaceutical industry. With the implementation of “Action Plan 2016 – Innovation Efficiency” we brought about a paradigm shift to this industry by making innovation faster and more cost-effective leading to enhanced efficiency. This was achieved, not least, by working together in a truly collaborative manner.

Our ongoing high-quality drug discovery alliance business combined with our vision and passion for growth, sharing and innovation enabled us to achieve long-term leadership in the drug discovery solutions market. “Action Plan 2022 – Leading External Innovation” was a continuation of our progressive path to combine excellence in science and execution. With our latest “Action Plan 2025 – The data-driven R&D Autobahn to Cures”, we are not just dealing with today´s challenges, but also look ahead to anticipate how the industry is going to evolve. We want to understand what actions we need to take in order to maintain and even further expand our leadership position.

With Evotec’s new Action Plan 2025 driving on “The R&D Autobahn to Cures”, our goal is to stay unique in the evolving life science industry and to create further value. Together with our partners, we will address the coming drivers for the future with personalised, preventive and predictive approaches, usage of new, intelligent, data-driven technologies and platforms, and the creation of operational efficiencies and processes to accelerate access to more precise and effective medicines for all patients.

Our Action Plan 2025 consists of eight building blocks to improve innovation and accelerate Evotec:

EVOiRD
EVOcells
EVOgenes
EVOaccess
EVOequity
EVOroyalty

These building blocks perfectly fit to our strategy to increase innovation and accelerate growth of Evotec as we progress towards 2025. All elements get usage of best possible human databases and modern artificial intelligence instruments to accelerate the drug discovery & development projects. Our eight drivers for the future should not be seen as single segments, but as ONE strategy for ONE global Evotec within the “sharing economy of drug discovery and development”.

In summary: The road to success – It is all about convergence

Technology, brilliant minds, data science, analytics and platform drivers

With our scientists and our drug discovery & development platforms, Evotec has set up the “Data-driven R&D Autobahn to Cures” that will lead us to the medicines of the future. We will continue to bring brilliant minds and cutting-edge technologies together to pursue our ultimate goal: bringing new and better drugs to patients!

The best combination of knowledge, experience, computational power and process excellence gives us the best chance to solve problems and create success in the inventive step. By combining seasoned professional R&D leaders, sophisticated platforms to create new data and information at high volume, and the right technology to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to the problems, Evotec can transform R&D performance. Advanced statistical techniques, data science, and analytics on curated data sets are critical to driving these approaches. Precision medicine and better access to more affordable drugs will define the road into the future of this industry. By establishing a seamless infrastructure for all relevant technologies and modalities, Evotec has become a pioneer in making the data-driven R&D Autobahn to Cures a reality.

Future investments will accelerate Evotec’s business and enable the Company’s next strategic growth phase. This allows us to speed-up the execution of our Action Plan 2025 to create the world-leading “Data-Driven R&D Autobahn to Cures”, covering the entire pharmaceutical value chain from discovery to commercial manufacturing.

  • Acceleration of the Company’s global infrastructure in biologics (e.g. second J.POD®), and investments in prediction technologies for biologics
  • Addition of novel cell and gene therapy capabilities in multiple indications
  • Improved access to patient-derived material and data for precision medicine processes in drug discovery and drug development
  • Investments in the Company’s proprietary technology platforms, such as iPSC and machine learning technology
  • Expansion of footprint in the United States and Europe
  • Further implementation of the Company’s translational strategy from academia to industry (BRIDGEs) and the Company’s equity participation strategy for highly innovative assets

In the past years, Evotec has proven it can keep its promise to make drug development faster, more efficient and less expensive. With our Action Plan 2025, we are set to expand this successful strategy to additional modalities such as biologics, proteins, RNA, cells, genes and antibody drug conjugates.

Join us on our journey on the “Data-driven R&D Autobahn to Cures”!

Contact us

Contact

Evotec
Business Development
T +44.(0)1235.86 15 61
F +44.(0)1235.86 31 39
info@evotec.com

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