Celmatix Achieves Second Milestone in Women's Health Drug Discovery Alliance with Evotec

Celmatix Inc., the leading women's health biotech focused uniquely on ovarian biology, today announced that the second milestone has been achieved in its five-year, multi-target alliance with Evotec. This milestone was triggered by Bayer and Evotec advancing a second drug program centered around a novel Celmatix-identified target from Evotec.

The polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) collaboration between Evotec and Bayer, announced in January, leverages the larger Celmatix-Evotec alliance, a partnership aimed at developing pre-clinical programs for highly prevalent, yet underserved conditions affecting women's health, including PCOS. Through this partnership, Celmatix, which uses multi-omic data-driven target discovery to focus on ovarian biology, has elucidated another novel target that will now be progressed to potentially create new therapies for women with PCOS.

Celmatix founder and CEO, Dr. Piraye Yurttas Beim, explained, "We are thrilled to have achieved this second milestone so rapidly after the first one earlier this year and feel it is a strong ongoing validation of the value of our target discovery platform for elucidating novel biological insights related to ovarian health. The ovary is a key endocrine organ, and there is growing awareness of the lifelong impact for women when the function of this organ is disrupted. We're excited to see Bayer's ongoing commitment to addressing these high unmet needs in women's health and to continue to work with leading organizations like Evotec to catalyze a sea-change for this field."

PCOS is the most common endocrine disorder in women. While the underlying cause of PCOS is largely unknown, genomic studies suggest a strong genetic connection.

"Novel drug targets for the treatment of PCOS are urgently needed. Selecting novel targets with new mechanisms of action on the basis of human patient data is a highly promising approach which should lead to a huge advancement in the field of women's health," stated Dr. Cord Dohrmann, Chief Scientific Officer of Evotec. "Today, most PCOS patients receive hormonal treatments, such as birth control, that were first introduced more than 50 years ago. We are proud to be working alongside Celmatix and Bayer respectively to address the high unmet need in a critical area of women's health with new treatments that tackle the cause of this debilitating condition rather than moderating its symptoms."

This announcement comes on the heels of Bayer's acquisition of UK-based KaNDy Therapeutics in August of this year.

About Celmatix

Celmatix is a preclinical-stage women's health biotech focused uniquely on ovarian biology. With a lead program in ovarian senescence and collaborations in PCOS and non-hormonal contraception with industry leaders, Celmatix is addressing areas of high unmet need by developing the next generation of interventions and pioneering advancements in ovarian health. For more information visit www.celmatix.com.

About Evotec SE

Evotec is a drug discovery alliance and development partnership company focused on rapidly progressing innovative product approaches with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academics, patient advocacy groups and venture capitalists. We operate worldwide and our more than 3,300 employees provide the highest quality stand-alone and integrated drug discovery and development solutions. We cover all activities from target-to-clinic to meet the industry's need for innovation and efficiency in drug discovery and development (EVT Execute). The Company has established a unique position by assembling top-class scientific experts and integrating state-of-the-art technologies as well as substantial experience and expertise in key therapeutic areas including neuronal diseases, diabetes and complications of diabetes, pain and inflammation, oncology, infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, fibrosis, rare diseases and women's health. On this basis, Evotec has built a broad and deep pipeline of approx. 100 co-owned product opportunities at clinical, pre-clinical and discovery stages (EVT Innovate). Evotec has established multiple long-term alliances with partners including Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, CHDI, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Sanofi, Takeda, UCB and others. For additional information please go to www.evotec.com and follow us on Twitter @Evotec.