HONG KONG —Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage AI-driven drug discovery company, has signed a US$1.2 billion multi-year, multi-target strategic research collaboration with Sanofi.
Sanofi is a global pharmaceutical company headquartered in Paris, France. The research collaboration will use Insilico Medicine’s artificial intelligence platform, Pharma.AI, to advance drug development candidates for up to six new targets.
The partnership comes after Insilico has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two years, including a recent Series D funding round that netted US$60 million in investments.
For Sanofi, it’s just the latest AI-driven drug delivery partnership following deals with other AI companies.
In late August, Sanofi signed a research and development agreement with the AI company Atomwise. Sanofi will pay Atomwise US$20 million upfront to identify, synthesize, and advance lead compounds for up to five targets under the terms of the agreement.
The deal could exceed US$1 billion with various milestone payments and tiered royalties for Atomwise.
Sanofi expanded a collaboration agreement with Exscientia in January to develop up to 15 oncology and immunology products using Exscientia’s AI-driven personalized medicine platform.
This was an expansion of previous agreements signed in 2016 and 2019. Sanofi paid Exscientia US$100 million in cash up front, with potential milestone payments of US$5.2 billion.
According to a press release, Sanofi will pay Insilico Medicine up to US$21.5 million to cover upfront and target nomination fees for Insilico’s end-to-end Pharma.AI platform, as well as gain access to a team of interdisciplinary drug discovery scientists to identify, synthesize, and advance high-quality lead therapeutic compounds up to development candidate stage.
Sanofi will make additional payments of up to US$1.2 billion if key R&D and sales milestones are met.
According to the terms of the agreement, any products developed will have tiered royalties ranging from the mid-single digits to the low double digits.
Pharma.AI leverages millions of data samples and data types to discover disease signatures and identify the most promising targets for billions of molecules in existence or that can be developed in the laboratory, according to Insilico.
It includes three components. PandaOmics is designed to discover and prioritize novel targets; Chemistry42 generates novel molecules; and InClinico designs and predicts clinical trials.
Insilico made headlines in July when it announced the platform had identified multiple unreported possible therapeutic targets for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
In a statement, Insilico Co-CEO and CSO Feng Ren, Ph.D. said the collaboration with Sanofi could accelerate novel therapeutics discovery to address diseases with unmet medical needs.
Artificial intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) is a cutting-edge technology that will control the future.
Using these technologies in the drug-discovery process will aid in the rapid identification of new targets and the development of cures for incurable diseases.
With the estimated market growth and the increased number of working companies and startups in this domain, the future of drug discovery appears to be extremely promising.
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