DUBLIN – Shares in Evotec AG posted a 13.6 percent gain Thursday on news of another asset transfer deal with Sanofi SA, in which it is getting €60 million (US$73.8 million) up front plus undisclosed long-term funding for taking on a portfolio of 10 preclinical and research-stage anti-infective drug development programs.

Hamburg, Germany-based Evotec is also taking on about 100 Sanofi employees attached to those programs, while Paris-based Sanofi retains option rights to develop and commercialize the assets.

None of the assets have reached the clinic. "We deliberately only took the preclinical portfolio, because that is exactly where we are strong," Evotec CEO Werner Lanthaler told BioWorld.

The deal has obvious parallels with a €250 million pact the two firms struck in oncology four years ago, which involved the transfer of 11 programs from Sanofi to Evotec. The latter firm took over the running of a Sanofi facility in Toulouse as part of the agreement. (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 4, 2014.)

This time round, it will take on responsibility for a unit in Lyon. But the big difference between the two deals is the competitive strength Evotec will gain in infectious disease research once the current transaction closes.

"There are 600 translational scientists in the world working on anti-infectives. We have about 180 of them," Lanthaler said.

Evotec does not have a comparable weight in oncology translational research, given the massive level of investment in cancer research around the global. The disparity in investment between the two areas is not driven by any great difference in medical need, however. "You're as likely to die from infection as you are from cancer," Lanthaler said.

But anti-infectives have proved to be notoriously difficult terrain for big pharma to navigate. "The medical need is there, the valley of death is there and the science is there, but the business model is just broken in infectious diseases," he said.

Evotec's offer is to bring greater efficiencies to the translational research stage of a development program, while maintaining an unbiased view of a project's potential. It is in full control of each asset's destiny – and is able to make stop/go decisions based entirely on its own appraisal. "That is absolutely key to get to this efficiency gain in pipeline building," Lanthaler said.

The approach is borne out in the 11 programs Evotec took on in the oncology alliance. "A large number of them have been terminated," Lanthaler said. "More than three" are still alive, however.

Although animal models of anti-infective disease tend to be more strongly predictive than those in other therapeutic areas, a similarly high attrition rate among the 10 programs Evotec is now taking on can be expected. But the company plans to rejuvenate the pipeline by inviting academic groups, foundations, government agencies and other biotech and pharma companies to participate in what it is calling "an open innovation platform."

The alliance excludes Sanofi's R&D work in vaccines, which it is retaining in-house, but it includes antiviral research programs as well as antibacterials. In the latter category, the World Health Organization's list of priorities has been a guiding force – it identified 12 bacterial families against which new antibiotics are urgently needed.

"The WHO has identified for all of us what we have to do," Lanthaler said.

The main focus will be on small-molecule development, but Evotec will be open to other modalities, such as antibodies or secreted factors, as well. The company gained specific anti-infectives expertise through its 2014 acquisition of Manchester, U.K.-based Euprotec Ltd., a CRO focused on anti-infectives research. Greenwich, Conn.-based drug discovery and development firm Aptuit LLC, which Evotec acquired last year for $300 million, will also lend its expertise to the project.

In all, Evotec has 2,300 scientists working under its umbrella. It offers, Lanthaler said, the same infrastructure and the same environment as a big pharma commercialization partner, the inference being that an asset that has graduated from Evotec will have all of the necessary attributes needed to survive an initial encounter with big pharma.

Shares in Evotec (Frankfurt:EVT) closed Thursday at €16.08, up €1.93 on the previous close. Shares in Sanofi (PARIS:SAN) edged up 1.3 percent.