Evotec's plague program gets $50 million in US funding

German biotech Evotec (EVT: Xetra) has been awarded a contract valued at up to $49.9 million by the US Department of Defense (DoD) for the rapid development of monoclonal antibody (MAb)-based drug product prototypes targeting plague.

Plague, an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is one of the designated targets of interest under the DoD’s Accelerated Antibodies Program.

Under the contract, the company’s Seattle-based US subsidiary, Just – Evotec Biologics, will develop MAb-based drug product prototypes from sequence discovery or evaluation of existing mAbs to completion of Phase I trials.