Sanofi and Exscientia Report Collaboration to Develop AI-Driven Pipeline of Precision-Engineered Medicines
Jan 7, 2022 By MarketDepth
Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY) and Exscientia Plc (NASDAQ: EXAI) have reported a research collaboration and license agreement to develop up to 15 novel small molecule candidates across oncology and immunology by leveraging Exscientia’s AI driven platform that utilizes patient samples. “We look forward to deepening our work with Exscientia, a leader in leveraging AI to modernize all aspects of drug discovery and development,” said Frank Nestle, Global Head of Research and Chief Scientific Officer, Sanofi. “Sanofi’s collaboration with Exscientia aims to transform how we discover and develop new small molecule medicines for cancer and immune-mediated diseases. Application of sophisticated AI and machine learning methods will not only shorten drug discovery timelines, but will also help to design higher quality and better targeted medicines for patients.”
Partnership
Sanofi and Exscientia will work together to identify and select target projects by utilizing Exscientia’s medicine platform. “It is immensely exciting to collaborate with Sanofi with our goal of realizing the full potential of AI to deliver the next generation of cancer and immunology medicines,” said Andrew Hopkins, DPhil, CEO and founder of Exscientia. “Our AI-driven platform can be leveraged across drug discovery, translational research and development, with applications ranging from improving the precision medicine and quality of drug candidates to enriching for patient selection in clinical trials. Our expanded collaboration with Sanofi will utilise the breadth of our platform to test AI-designed drug candidates against patient tissue models, potentially providing far better accuracy than conventional approaches such as mouse models. When you consider the change this represents – testing candidates against actual human tissue years before a clinical trial – it’s transformative.”
$100 Million Cash Payment
Exscientia will receive a cash payment of USD 100 Million from Sanofi and will be eligible to receive future research, clinical development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments of up to USD 5.2 Billion in aggregate if all milestones for all programs involved are achieved.
