Exscientia inked a drug discovery collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) that could bring the Scotland-based company up to $37.5 million.
As a part of the deal, Exscientia plans to use its artificial-intelligence platform to discover small molecules for up to 10 disease-related targets, as chosen by GSK.
GSK is slated to pay Exscientia in preclinical candidate milestone payments, if all of the collaboration’s objectives are met. No other financial details were disclosed.
“This agreement with GSK is the second we have signed in recent months with a top global pharma company. The alliance provides further validation of our AI-driven platform and its potential to accelerate the discovery of novel, high-quality drug candidates,” Exscientia CEO Andrew Hopkins said in prepared remarks. “Applying our approach to client discovery projects has already delivered candidate-quality molecules in roughly one-quarter of the time, and at one-quarter of the cost of traditional approaches. Our intention therefore is to apply these capabilities to projects selected by GSK. Delivering efficiencies to drug discovery has the potential to revolutionise the way early projects are executed, enabling more dynamic target selections from the burgeoning set of opportunities. We look forward to a productive collaboration with GSK.”
“Exscientia has built an excellent team with proven innovation in drug discovery technologies,” John Baldoni, senior VP of platform science & technology at GSK, said. “We anticipate that their industry-leading approach will accelerate the discovery of new molecules against high value GSK targets with speed and confidence,and without compromising quality.”
