Eli Lilly is inking a $100 million-plus biobucks deal with Insilico Medicine in hopes of using artificial intelligence to discover new drugs.
The Indianapolis Big Pharma will combine Insilico’s Pharma.AI platform—tech built to provide end-to-end coverage for pharmaceutical research and development—with its own expertise to jointly identify and advance novel therapies, according to a Nov. 10 release.
Insilico will help generate and design candidate compounds, taking aim at undisclosed targets. For its efforts, the Massachusetts-based drug discoverer could collect over $100 million in upfront, milestone and tiered royalty payments, the press release states.
The AI platforms aren’t new to Lilly—the pharma had previously signed on to use Insilico’s tech in a 2023 software licensing deal. The pact wasn’t publicly disclosed at the time, but Lilly must have liked what it saw, returning for more via the newly penned research agreement.
“Lilly has been a valued user of our Pharma.AI software suite, and this expanded collaboration further recognizes Insilico’s AI-driven drug discovery capabilities while strengthening our longstanding partnership,” Insilico founder and co-CEO Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., said in the release.
In March, the former Fierce 15 and Fierce 50 winner Insilico raised $110 million to carry forward its AI-powered drug design platforms. The AI-based biotech also rolled out plans for a humanoid lab robot that will be tasked with learning the skills of scientists.
The company touts its ability to accelerate drug discovery, as evidenced by its 12- to 18-month average turnaround time from project initiation to preclinical candidate nomination. Insilico asserts that it nominated 20 preclinical candidates between 2021 and 2024.
The company’s most advanced asset is a computer-designed drug that’s moving into pivotal trials after a phase 2a study demonstrated improvements for patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
The AI company says it is focused on delivering new drugs for unmet needs, including in "fibrosis, oncology, immunology, pain, and obesity and metabolic disorders,” according to the release.
Lilly isn’t the only pharma to take an interest in Insilico, with several known partners of the AI shop, including Sanofi, Pfizer, Menarini Group and Boehringer Ingelheim, among others.
As for Lilly, the pharma has been busy building out its AI capabilities over the past few days. In late October, the company teamed up with computing giant Nvidia to build a new supercomputer designed to fuel an “AI factory”—a computing infrastructure that can ingest data, train models on experiments performed by Lilly scientists and generate inferences.
Lilly plans to use the new computing power for molecule discovery research and to reduce development timelines. The pharma is also making some of its models available via Lilly TuneLab, its machine learning platform.
The TuneLab platform lets early-stage biotechs access Lilly’s models in return for training data used in further model creation. Participating biotechs include macrocycle therapy-focused Circle Pharma and AI-enabled drug discoverer insitro.