Nuevolution receives milestone payment from Merck

Nuevolution A/S today announced that it has received a milestone payment derived from its collaboration with Merck & Co. Inc., Whitehouse Station, NJ.

The payment was triggered following identification of several candidate molecules that conformed to the prespecified criteria established under the terms of the original agreement. These include several accepted drug-like characteristics and nanomolar potency.

In its collaboration with Merck, Nuevolution is applying its proprietary Chemetics(R) technology to identify novel small molecule leads against drug targets of interest to Merck. Nuevolution has so far screened more than one billion small molecules against the first of the targets selected under the collaboration. The candidate molecules so far identified have been shown to disrupt an undisclosed, therapeutically relevant, protein-protein interaction in vitro.

"We are excited about the results that have been obtained thus far in the collaboration with Merck. Considering the complexity of the target, we believe that the results demonstrate the value of having access to hundreds of millions to billions of small molecules for screening," said Alex Gouliaev, CEO of Nuevolution A/S. "It is a great pleasure working with Merck's first class team of scientists, and we are looking forward to a continued fruitful outcome of the collaboration."

Merck and Nuevolution entered into a collaboration in 2008. In April 2009, Nuevolution announced an expansion to the second phase of the collaboration.