AI Pharma Deals 2022

AI meets Drug Discovery

Photo by Héctor J. Rivas on Unsplash

The artificial intelligence (AI) for drug discovery and development market size was valued at $520 million in 2019 and is projected to reach $4,815 million by 2027, registering a CAGR of 31.6% from 2020 to 2027 (source). 

In general, in the healthcare industry AI has the ability to efficiently identify, develop, detect and screen small molecules in less time (in weeks versus years). Therefore, the market is expected to witness an exponential growth during the forecast period, as a consequence of the benefits of using these advanced techniques over conventional procedures. 

Moreover, the market is mainly driven by a growing number of industry-startups-academia collaborations and partnerships, and prominent players in the global AI in drug discovery market (source). 

Here is an overview of the AI drug discovery industry-startups collaborations and partnerships during 2022: 

On April 05, 2022, the French AI company Iktos (@IktosAI) announced a strategic collaboration agreement with Teijin Pharma (based in Japan), in order to apply Iktos's generative modelling technology (Computer Aided Drug Design, CADD) to several Teijin Pharma’s small molecule preclinical drug discovery programs. Teijin Pharma is committed to providing healthcare solutions in the priority fields of bone, joint, rehabilitation, neurology, respiratory, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. 

Iktos, started also a collaboration agreement (30 March 2022) with another company from Japan, ONO PHARMACEUTICAL CO., LTD. with a focus on the oncology, immunology, neurology research. Under this agreement, Iktos will apply its de novo ligand and structure-based generative modelling technologies and software Makya and its AI-based retrosynthesis analysis and planning tool Spaya to complement Ono’s drug discovery capabilities. 

And on January 05, 2022, Iktos and Astrogen, a clinical and research-oriented biotech company in S.Korea focused in developing innovative new drugs for neurological diseases (their lead candidate is AST-001, under phase 2 clinical development in S.Korea for Autism Spectrum Disorder), announced that they have entered into a research collaboration agreement aimed at the discovery of innovative small molecule pre-clinical drug candidates for Parkinson's disease.

On April 05, 2022, PathaAI (@Path_AI) has entered into a multiyear drug discovery partnership with GlaxoSmithKline on advancing clinical trials and drug development in oncology and for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), an aggressive type of fatty liver disease, by leveraging PathAI’s technologies, including the use of PathAI’s AIM-NASH tool.

On March, 24, 2022, Insilico Medicine (@InSilicoMeds) a clinical stage end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery company announced it has entered into a strategic collaboration with EQRx, a company committed to developing and delivering innovative medicines to patients at radically lower prices. Under this agreement, Insilico will apply its Pharma.AI platform to advance de novo small molecule design and generation with EQRx's clinical development and commercialisation expertise. 

On January 11, 2022, Shanghai Fosun Pharma (focusing on major therapeutic areas, including oncology, immunology, "4 hypers": hypertension, hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia and hyperuricemia and their complications, as well as central nervous system) and Insilico Medicine entered into a collaboration agreement to advance the discovery and development of four biological targets, as well as the co-development of Insilico's QPCTL program (glutaminyl-peptide cyclotransferase-like protein). 

Under this agreement, Insilico will receive a total upfront payment of $13 million for the R&D collaboration projects and the co-development of the QPCTL program. Interestingly, in under 40 days since the collaboration announcement, the two companies nominated their first preclinical drug candidate ISM004-1057D, a potential first-in-class small molecule inhibitor that targets QPCTL. 

On April 19, 2022, Consegna Pharma Inc. (@ConsegnaPharma) a drug delivery company that leverages its AI-based Computational Drug Delivery technology to provide solutions to reduce deaths from opioid overdoses, announced the acquisition of Fathom Pharma LLC, a company developing long-acting pain medicines. Fathom Pharma is focused on developing new treatments for moderate to severe chronic pain and its lead product, FP01, is being developed for the treatment of chronic pain in terminally ill patients.

Last March (24 March 2022), Tokyo based Elix an AI drug discovery company announced a joint research collaboration on the retrosynthetic analysis module "Elix Synthesize™" with Shionogi & Co., Ltd (a Japanese pharmaceutical company best known for developing Crestor, a statin medication) for the purpose of verifying retrosynthetic analysis using chemical reaction data from Shionogi. During this collaboration, Elix Synthesize will be customised to match Shionogi's proprietary data to validate a highly accurate, high-speed, practical retrosynthetic analysis model for drug discovery research.

Takeda and Evozyne (@evozyne) that first teamed up at the beginning of last year, have just announced (05 April 2022) a new agreement that could cover gene therapies for up to four rare disease targets, but the disease targets remain undisclosed. During this collaboration, Evozyne will create novel protein sequences that can be advanced as gene therapies. Chicago-based Evozyne says it engineers proteins by mimicking millions of years of natural evolution, by using AI and ML techniques that analyse the proteins produced by nature. Development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments could bring Evozyne up to $400 million.

Pfizer announced this year (February 2022) that extended the collaboration with the Israeli AI drug development firm CytoReason (@Cytoreason), that was first launched in 2019, in order to use the Israeli company’s digital models of the human immune system and diseases in Pfizer’s pursuit of developing innovative drugs. CytoReason said its solution has “provided Pfizer with multiple insights in a number of R&D programs across over 20 diseases".

Also AstraZeneca and Benevolent (@benevolent_ai) announced (January 2022) that they have expanded their AI drug discovery partnership (the expansion builds on the long-term partnership entered in 2019), to include disease areas such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and heart failure (HF). 

Sanofi inked a deal (January 2022) worth more than $100 million with the AI tech company Exscientia (@exscientiaAI) for the development of up to 15 novel small molecule candidates in oncology and immunology. Researchers will use Exscientia’s AI platform for a variety of uses including target identification and patient selection. As part of the deal, Exscientia is eligible for as much as $5.2 billion in payments for clinical development, regulatory and commercial milestones. 

Amgen partnered with Generate Biomedicines (@generate_biomed) that uses AI and ML to discover new drugs. The deal (January 2022) includes $50 million upfront for the initial five program, with an option to collaborate on five more. Amgen will pay up to $370 million in milestones and also royalties for each resulting program, with a total potential transaction value of $1.9 billion. Specific indications or disease areas were not disclosed in the announcement. 

On February 9, 2022, Quris.ai an AI drug development company that created a “patient on a chip” simulation of a human body to gather data for a ML system to interpret (without the need of animal testing), has signed a cooperation agreement with the German pharma giant Merck, for a period of five years. As part of the collaboration, Merck will gain access to Quris’ prediction platform for the identification of drug candidates that pose a risk of liver poisoning during drug development. If the drug development is successful, Quris will enjoy significant capital rewards. 

Merck and the AI-powered drug discovery company Absci (@abscibio) have signed this year (January 2022) a research collaboration for up to three new drug targets to match them up with potential medicines, in a deal worth up to $610 million in upfront fees and milestone payments. 

Finally, this month (April 20, 2022) BioXcel Therapeutics (@BioXcel_Tx) entered a $260 million long-term financing agreement with Oaktree Capital Management and Qatar Investment Authority to commercially launch a new schizophrenia drug (IGALMI—or dexmedetomidine—an orally dissolving formula used to treat agitation associated with schizophrenia or bipolar I or II disorder in adults), aiming to become the leading AI-enabled neuroscience company. And Pear Therapeutics (@Pear_Tx) a Boston-based software developer, has signed an agreement (March 21, 2022) with the multinational conglomerate SoftBank to develop a new prescription digital therapeutic aimed at treating sleep/wake disorders in Japanese patients. This deal (that financial terms weren’t disclosed) comes about two years after Pear earned the FDA’s authorisation for Somryst in US, its English-language digital therapeutic for chronic insomnia in patients age 22 and older. 

Until next time,

P.S.

For more about AI Pharma Deals: 

• AI Pharma Deals: GSK and AI Startups (@exscientiaAI, @CloudPharm, @InSilicoMeds, @InsilicoBiotech) 

• AI Pharma Deals: Takeda and AI Startups (@RecursionPharma, @Numerate_Inc acquired by @ValoHealth, @ImageAnalysisGroupIAG)

• AI Pharma Deals: AstraZeneca and AI Startups (@benevolent_ai, @proteinqure, @BergHealth, @Schrodinger, @AlibabaAliHealth, @TencentGlobal, @C4XDiscovery, @GatehouseBio, @deepmattergroup, @AliveCor)

• AI Pharma Deals: Pfizer and AI Startups (@IktosAI, @saamatechinc, @BiovistaInc, @Cytoreason, @InSilicoMeds, @XtalPi, @AtomwiseInc, @BerkeleyLights) 

• AI Pharma Deals: Bayer and AI Startups (@SensyneHealth, @exscientiaAI, @AtomwiseInc, @RecursionPharm, @Turbine, @Cyclica, @SystemsOncologyLLC, @Schrodinger, @BerkeleyLights) 

• AI Pharma Deals: Roche (Genentech) and AI Startups (@GNSHealthcare, @Genesis Therapeutics, @SensyneHealth plc, @Owkin, @ReverieLabs, @Genialis, @exscientiaAI, @CambridgeQuantumComputing) 

• AI Pharma Deals: Novartis and AI Startups (@InsigHealth, @ConversationHEALTH, @Amblyotech, @MicrosoftAI4Health, @HewlettPackardEnterprise, @IBMWatson, @Intel, @TencentGlobal, @AdaHealth, @KelvinHealth, @RetinAIMedicalAG, @BenchSci, @benevolent_ai) 

• AI Pharma Deals: Merck and AI Startups (@AionLabs, @Syapse, @McKesson, @OntadaOncology, @InSilicoMeds, @Nucleai, @IktosAI, @insitro, @BioXcel_Tx, @Path_AI, @TencentGlobal, @Cyclica, @AtomwiseInc, @Numerate_Inc acquired by @ValoHealth)