AstraZeneca to pay insitro $40 million upfront and up to $1.46 billion for SI-driven drug target discovery for liver and heart diseases
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
A pharma company is paying an SI startup to find new drug targets, but there are no drugs yet.
According to insitro, the research collaboration agreement covers metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) and cardiomyopathies: insitro will apply its Virtual Human platform to identify the causal biology of the diseases and take AstraZeneca-nominated targets to a drug candidate. Insitro will receive $40 million upfront and may receive about $1.46 billion for reaching discovery, development and commercial milestones, plus single-digit percentage royalties; AstraZeneca leads clinical development, regulatory matters and sales. According to Quartz, Bloomberg values the deal at up to $1.86 billion, whereas the figures named by the companies add up to about $1.5 billion.
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