Evotec AG announced the achievement of specific success criteria in an ion channel research collaboration with Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Ono) and the receipt of a milestone payment. This collaboration project was initiated in October 2009 to identify small molecules targeting an ion channel implicated in cardiovascular, CNS and urological diseases in one and a half years and now successfully identified multiple compounds meeting various criteria in activity, selectivity and pharmacokinetic characteristics. Evotec and Ono now agree to continue this research collaboration until April 2012 and enter into lead optimisation with the goal to generate new chemical entities, which will have the potential to become new drug candidates. Ono has a worldwide right to develop and commercialize compounds generated by Evotec in this collaboration.

Dr Mario Polywka, chief operating officer of Evotec, commented: "We are delighted to deliver high value molecules to our partner Ono and to expand our collaboration. We enjoy a very successful and close relationship. This achievement clearly demonstrates the value we bring to our alliance partners in the area of drug discovery. We look forward to continuing working closely with our colleagues at Ono."

"We are very pleased to achieve the research milestone and progress into lead optimisation with a project. We highly appreciate a wide range of drug discovery technologies at Evotec and the experiences of their scientists. We are confident that multiple preclinical candidates will be identified in near future" said Kazuhito Kawabata, Ph.D., managing director, Research Headquarters at Ono.