NEW YORK – Evotec said today that it has acquired certain assets from Ncardia related to the use of induced pluripotent stem cells for drug discovery.
The assets include intellectual property relevant to iPSC-based phenotypic drug discovery and an existing undisclosed product business around iPSC-derived cells. Evotec said it is also taking on 17 stem cell biology experts operating out of laboratories at the BioCampus Cologne in Germany.
The Cologne-based team's expertise is in generating multiple disease-relevant cell types from iPSCs and applying them in drug discovery. Evotec said that combining this with its own iPSC expertise and drug-discovery platforms will create new biological research opportunities and enhance new and existing partnerships.
"Additional expertise and capacity in the iPSC space as well as a substantial partner network will allow us to further accelerate our efforts to build a world-leading iPSC translational biology platform across different disease areas," Evotec CSO Cord Dohrmann said in a statement.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.