PsychoGenics Inc. announced that it has entered into a strategic alliance with Evotec AG to provide integrated CNS drug discovery solutions to pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The two companies will work together in a seamless fashion to provide existing and new clients access to their complementary drug discovery platforms for the identification and development of new therapeutics to treat CNS disorders.

PsychoGenics is a leader in preclinical neurobiology applied to CNS and pain drug discovery and development. Its extensive capabilities coupled with its proprietary, high-throughput behavioural testing platforms that employ cutting edge bioinformatics allows the rapid screening and optimization of compounds for CNS activity. These proprietary platforms are used for the characterization of drugs, the phenotyping of disease models and the multi-dimensional testing of drugs in disease models.

Evotec is the premier provider of drug discovery alliances to the pharmaceutical industry based on its state-of-the-art technology platform and broad range of integrated capabilities. Evotec has therapeutic area expertise in metabolic disease, CNS, pain, inflammation and oncology and differentiates itself based on a strong track record in drug discovery, scientists with many years experience in the industry and an innovative technology platform.

Dr Mario Polywka, Chief Operating Officer at Evotec stated: “By bringing together the industry leading CNS drug discovery platforms of Evotec and PsychoGenics, our clients and partners will benefit through an increased probability of success and faster and more informed decision making in their drug discovery efforts with the goal of delivering pre-clinical candidates in the most time and cost efficient manner.”

Dr Emer Leahy, President and CEO of PsychoGenics explained: “We are delighted to enter into this collaboration with Evotec, an innovative leader in drug discovery. PsychoGenics and Evotec each have a long-standing history of successful partnerships in which they share discovery risk with pharmaceutical companies, and have delivered several pre-clinical candidates. Now, by combining forces, partners have the opportunity to avail themselves of fully-integrated and proprietary capabilities to drive and transform their CNS discovery programs and lower their overall risk.

PsychoGenics, applies its behavioural expertise together with advances in robotics, computer vision, and informatics to provide innovative solutions for CNS drug discovery. It helps to discover treatments for such major neurological and psychiatric disorders as: ALS, anxiety, cognitive impairment, depression, Huntington´s Disease, psychosis/schizophrenia, PsychoGenics and Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).

Evotec is a drug discovery alliance and development partnership company focused on rapidly progressing innovative product approaches with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.