Singapore: German firm Evotec has acquired Sanofi's drug discovery operation in Toulouse to build an European centre of excellence for compound management and drug discovery services.

Evotec will integrate the Toulouse capacities into its global drug discovery platform to be utilized for early-stage discovery and pre-clinical process from screening to medicinal chemistry. From this new facility, Evotec will perform collaborative research with its pharma, biotech and academic partners as well as its own internal oncology research.

Besides, Evotec and Sanofi also entered into a strategic alliance on improving innovation effectiveness in the drug discovery and pre-clinical development space for the next five years.

Dr Werner Lanthaler, chief executive officer, Evotec, said, "We are very proud that Sanofi has chosen Evotec for this significant alliance. This collaboration is a major milestone in the drug discovery space and accelerates Evotec's strategy to become the leading drug discovery partner to the Pharma and biotech industry as well as academia. We will warmly welcome the Sanofi employees to the Evotec Group and look forward to working with them."

"Open innovation is a key driver of Sanofi's strategy. We believe Evotec will be an ideal partner, a company that fits our quality expectations and our strategic vision. Our collaboration will secure the future for our employees in Toulouse and importantly accelerate our pipeline productivity", said Dr Elias Zerhouni, president Global R&D for Sanofi.

The alliance between Evotec and Sanofi would cover initiatives including drug pipeline-building with initial focus on oncology, accelerate drug discovery projects to the point of pre-clinical development candidates. Evotec will license from Sanofi a portfolio of projects including five well-advanced pre-clinical projects in oncology that will be progressed to investigational new drug jointly by Sanofi and Evotec before potential partnering.