Gilead Sciences and artificial intelligence (AI)-focused Genesis Therapeutics have entered into a collaboration aimed at developing small molecule therapies across multiple targets.
The partners will use Genesis’ generative and predictive AI platform to generate and optimise molecules for targets selected by Gilead.
Both companies will collaborate on preclinical research activities, while Gilead will have exclusive rights for potential clinical development and commercialisation of compounds resulting from the alliance.
In exchange, Genesis will receive $35m upfront across three targets, with Gilead given the option to nominate additional targets for a predetermined per-target fee. Genesis will also be eligible for additional preclinical, development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments, as well as tiered royalties on future net sales.
Flavius Martin, executive vice president, research at Gilead, said: “The use of generative AI in drug development, enabled by people, science and other new technology, has shown potential to accelerate the discovery of molecules for challenging targets.
“We look forward to working with Genesis to apply [its] AI platform to discover and advance novel therapies that may address significant unmet patient needs.”
Genesis’ GEMS (genesis exploration of molecular space) platform integrates proprietary diffusion models, language models and physical machine learning simulations to enable the discovery of molecules for challenging or previously ‘undruggable’ targets.
The company’s founder and chief executive officer, Evan Feinberg, said: “Many promising protein targets have a paucity of relevant training data, which makes it difficult to apply off-the-shelf machine learning methods.
“We have designed our physical AI platform to address this issue and enable drug discovery campaigns for difficult targets.”
There has been a growing focus on AI within the pharmaceutical industry. Less than a week ago, Eli Lilly and Genetic Leap entered into a research collaboration worth up to $409m to develop genetic medicines using Genetic Leap’s RNA-targeted AI platform.
Gilead has made a number of deals itself this year, including its oncology partnership with Merus worth over $1.5bn to discover dual tumour-associated antigens targeting trispecific antibodies.
The company also completed its $4.3bn acquisition of CymaBay Therapeutics in March, and entered into an exclusive licence agreement worth up to $647.5m to advance Xilio’s tumour-activated IL-12 programme in the same month.