Evotec Wins German Government Research Grant

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Hamburg, Germany - 18 November 2009: Evotec (Frankfurt Stock
Ex-change: EVT, TecDAX), a leading provider in the discovery and
development of novel small molecule drugs, today announced that it
has been granted up to ¤2.5 m in research funds from the BMBF, within
the Neu2 consortium, to advance research and development activities
on the target Serine Racemase for potential use in neuroprotection.
Evotec will use its drug discovery platform and expertise in
progressing this program towards the clinic, particularly making use
of its high quality compound library and proprietary fragment-based
drug discovery platform.

The Neu2 consortium, including Evotec, MerckSerono, the European
ScreeningPort GmbH, Bionamics GmbH, and the University Medical Center
Hamburg-Eppendorf amongst others were successful against stiff
competition in this nationwide competition. The goal of the
competition is to strengthen the German pharmaceutical industry and
to bring innovation to market. The winning consortium, within which
Evotec plays an important role, focuses on developing therapeutics
aimed at Multiple Sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr Klaus Maleck, Chief Financial Officer of Evotec comments: "Evotec
is pleased to work on identifying new drugs against neurodegenerative
diseases within this consortium. At the same time, this grant
represents a valuable alternative to financing our research without
jeopardizing our patent position. The work has the potential to make
major improvements to the quality of life of the patient and can have
considerable, non-dilutive impact on our investment case."

BMBF comments: "The strategic competition "BioPharma" was initiated
in 2007 because the translation from basic research, which is on a
very high level in Germany, to product development and economic
realisation does not work properly. Many expensive scientific
findings will never be used in drug development because scientists
push their work on a level ready for publication whereas
pharmaceutical companies only start their developments on the level
of leads or validated targets at least. Therefore BMBF does not
support single projects in the frame of BioPharma, but consortia that
cover the complete adding value process, from molecule to product.
The Neu2 consortium is one of the three winners of this competition
who convinced the review board with a strategic concept, a plausible
management, an integrated financing concept, and adequate partners."

Neurodegenerative diseases are a strongly growing disease class, of
which Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Alzheimer disease are among the
best known examples. MS is one of the most widespread neurological
disease in young adults estimated to affect approx. 2.5 million
people worldwide while Alz-heimer is predominately a disease of the
older population with a prevalence of 4 % at the age of >65 years.
The diseases are characterized by progres-sive central nervous system
impairments and can be visualised by the oc-currence of widespread
neurodegenerative processes in the brain. The symptoms, onset and
progression of these diseases are heterogeneous and their treatment
is limited to using disease modifying drugs (DMDs) aiming towards
improving the patient's quality of life.

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