Nuevolution Receives Milestone Payment From Merck & Co

Nuevolution has received a milestone payment derived from its collaboration with Merck & Co. The payment was triggered following identification of several candidate molecules that conformed to the pre-specified 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 applied its proprietary chemetics 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.

Alex Gouliaev, CEO of Nuevolution, said: 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. 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.