Evotec, a Germany-based drug discovery alliance and development partnership company, will take legal steps against Israel-based Andromeda Biotech to recover all Evotec claims and potential damages that result from recent incidents in relation to DiaPep277.

On Sept. 08, U.S.-based Hyperion Therapeutics announced it will discontinue product development of DiaPep277 for newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes, because Hyperion had uncovered evidence that certain employees of Andromeda, in collusion with a third-party biostatistics firm in Israel, engaged in serious misconduct with regard to the use of generated data to manipulate the analyses to obtain a favorable result of the phase III trial.

In 2007, DeveloGen sold all rights to the drug candidate DiaPep277 to Andromeda, a newly formed wholly owned subsidiary of Clal Biotechnology Industries. DeveloGen transferred all rights in DiaPep277 to Andromeda in return for single-digit royalty rates and certain milestones in the single-digit rate upon commercialization of DiaPep277.

Evotec, which acquired DeveloGen in 2010, had no involvement in any aspect or decision-making regarding the development of DiaPep277. Similarly, Evotec's subsidiary DeveloGen also was not involved in any way in the further development of DiaPep277 after selling it to Andromeda in June 2007, and had absolutely no role in the data generation and analyses.

In light of the recent developments with DiaPep277, Evotec has decided to take legal steps against Andromeda to recover all Evotec claims and potential damages that result from this fraudulent activity.