Insilico Medicine has entered a multi-year research and development collaboration with Servier, valued at up to $888 million, to discover and develop new oncology therapies.
The partnership pairs Insilico’s artificial intelligence drug discovery platforms with Servier’s cancer drug development expertise to target challenging oncology mechanisms. Insilico will lead the use of its AI technologies to discover and progress potential drug candidates that meet defined scientific and development criteria.
Under the agreement, Insilico will receive up to $32 million in upfront and near-term research payments. Servier will share R&D costs and, once promising molecules are identified, will lead clinical validation, regulatory processes and global commercialisation of resulting oncology candidates.
Insilico has assembled an oncology pipeline addressing several cancer indications using both novel and established mechanisms. The company says its advanced AI and automation tools have shortened early-stage discovery timelines: from 2021 to 2024 it nominated 20 preclinical candidates, with an average time from project start to preclinical candidate of 12 to 18 months per programme, synthesising and testing roughly 60 to 200 molecules per programme.
Insilico founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov said, “I am excited to see the collaboration—it is yet another strong acknowledgement of our AI capabilities and R&D expertise. As we deepen the integration of generative AI into every stage of the pharma value chain, I believe the future of pharmaceutical superintelligence is never so close, where AI agents could actually make decisions and design experiments, driving a virtuous cycle of faster, smarter, and safer drug development.”
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