Eli Lilly and Insilico Medicine have announced an expansion in their existing collaboration aimed at advancing AI-powered drug discovery.
The new deal, worth up to $2.75 billion, will focus on financial assistance, regulatory and commercial cooperation.
Under the recent agreement, Insilico will receive an upfront payment of $115 million following regulatory, commercial and development milestones. The company will also be eligible to receive tiered royalties on future sales.
Lilly, on the other hand, will get access to Insilico’s AI engine and an exclusive worldwide license to develop, manufacture and commercialize certain oral treatments that are currently in preclinical development.
According to Alex Zhavoronkov, Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, “By deploying AI technologies that scale from biomarkers to life models, to world models of human and animal life, we can identify multiple targets that drive multiple diseases at the same time.”
Using generative AI tools, Insilico has succeeded in developing at least 28 medicines, about half of which are in the clinical stage.
In December, the company went public in Hong Kong, sending its shares rising by more than 50 percent.
According to Andrew Adams, group vice president of molecule discovery at Lilly, the expanded partnership with Insilico will help us explore novel mechanisms and accelerate the identification of potentially promising therapeutic molecules across multiple disease areas.
Lilly and Insilico partnered with an AI-based software licensing agreement through 2023, which was later expanded into a research collaboration in November.
