British drugmaker AstraZeneca and AI therapeutics company Insitro have signed an agreement worth up to about $1.5 billion to research and develop treatments for liver and heart diseases.
Under the agreement, Insitro will receive $40 million upfront and could earn up to about $1.46 billion in discovery, development, and commercial milestone payments. It will also be eligible for single-digit royalties on potential global sales.
The companies will focus on metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, or MASH, also known as fatty liver disease, and cardiomyopathies, which are diseases of the heart muscle.
Insitro will use its Virtual Human AI platform to study human and cellular data, identify the biological causes of the diseases, and find possible drug targets. It will also work on targets selected by AstraZeneca through the development-candidate stage.
AstraZeneca will handle clinical development, regulatory work, and commercialization. The drugmaker will receive exclusive worldwide rights to selected programs developed under the agreement.
"We know that disease biology is incredibly complex, and one of the most critical decisions in R&D is selecting the right target," said Sharon Barr, executive vice president and head of biopharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca.
Insitro founder and CEO Daphne Koller said the diseases can have different biological causes among patients, making them difficult to understand and treat.
"MASH and cardiomyopathies are prevalent, underdiagnosed diseases where high-content data holds immense signal for uncovering disease drivers," Koller said.
Founded in 2018, U.S.-based Insitro combines machine learning with biological experiments to discover and develop medicines. The startup has raised more than $750 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock, Google Ventures, T. Rowe Price and Temasek. It has also signed drug discovery agreements with Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Gilead Sciences.
Drugmakers increase AI investments
The AstraZeneca agreement follows several other large AI drug discovery deals. Zealand Pharma and Generate Biomedicines signed a deal worth nearly $1.2 billion this week to develop AI-designed protein treatments for metabolic diseases.
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Inceptive announced an agreement worth up to $2 billion in June to develop ribonucleic acid, or RNA, medicines using AI. That same month, SK Biopharmaceuticals and Insilico Medicine signed an AI drug discovery deal worth more than $2.5 billion.
Last month, Novo Nordisk partnered with Anthropic to test Claude Science in drug research and use Anthropic's models for software development.
In March, Roche expanded its work with Nvidia by launching an AI computing system with more than 3,500 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs. Roche said the infrastructure will support drug discovery, diagnostics, and manufacturing.