AstraZeneca has entered a billion-dollar artificial intelligence (AI)-powered drug discovery partnership and licensing agreement with insitro. The collaboration is intended to identify novel targets and therapies for a range of cardiometabolic diseases, with the companies concentrating on areas where treatment needs remain unmet. Their work will focus on developing drugs that address the underlying drivers of disease in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) and cardiomyopathies that affect the heart muscle. The agreement brings together AstraZeneca’s drug development capabilities and insitro’s approach to analysing complex biological data, with the aim of advancing selected programmes towards potential treatments.
Under the financial terms, AstraZeneca will pay insitro $40m upfront, while the agreement includes around $1.46bn in potential development and commercial milestones. In return, AstraZeneca will obtain exclusive global rights to develop selected programmes created through the partnership. insitro will also be eligible to receive single-digit royalties on global sales if any resulting medicines reach the market. The arrangement establishes a pathway for AstraZeneca to progress programmes arising from the AI-powered drug discovery collaboration while providing insitro with milestone-based payments and potential sales-linked royalties.
AI Platform to Investigate Disease Biology
The partnership centres on insitro’s Virtual Human AI platform, which has been trained using large-scale human and cellular data. The biotech uses the platform to identify causal disease biology and investigate the factors that contribute to disease. insitro founder and CEO Daphne Koller said applying AI to complex datasets related to MASH and cardiomyopathies could help the companies unlock greater discovery power and uncover new insights into the genetics behind these conditions.
“Our platform simultaneously deconvolutes disease biology and identifies causal drivers of disease pathologies,” Koller commented.
She added that combining insitro’s expertise with AstraZeneca would enable the partners to scale their work, with the potential to move novel programmes through development stages and to patients more rapidly. The use of AI-powered drug discovery is central to the companies’ plan to identify disease targets and potential therapies in these areas.
AstraZeneca Deepens Focus on MASH
The deal also supports AstraZeneca’s efforts to strengthen its position in the cardiovascular, renal and metabolic (CVRM) segment. The company already markets several medicines in this disease area, including the blockbuster SGLT2 inhibitor, Farxiga (dapagliflozin). Farxiga is now facing generic erosion following its US loss of market exclusivity earlier this year.
Alongside its broader CVRM portfolio, AstraZeneca is seeking to establish a presence in the MASH market. It is currently assessing the potential of AZD2389, a small molecule FAP inhibitor, in Phase II trials. The programme follows the discontinuation of its former antisense oligonucleotide MASH candidate, AZD2693, after it delivered lacklustre results in a Phase II study. Through the new AI-powered drug discovery partnership with insitro, AstraZeneca will seek to identify additional programmes that address the biology underlying MASH and cardiomyopathies.
