AstraZeneca pays insitro $40m upfront to find liver and heart drug targets with AI, with up to about $1.46bn more in milestones

insitro, a South San Francisco company that uses machine learning to find drugs, announced a worldwide exclusive research collaboration agreement with AstraZeneca on 15 October. It covers MASH, a fatty-liver disease, and cardiomyopathies, diseases of the heart muscle.

insitro gets $40 million upfront and can earn up to approximately $1.46 billion in potential discovery, development and commercial milestones. Its release adds single-digit royalties based on any global sales. insitro will use its Virtual Human platform to find what drives each disease and take targets AstraZeneca nominates through to development candidates. The release says AstraZeneca will lead all clinical development, regulatory work and commercialisation.

The deal is at the discovery stage: no drug candidate, clinical data, number of targets or timeline is given. Reuters, which put the upfront payment in its headline, gives the same $40m and $1.46bn figures. Some headlines round the total to $1.5bn, and one press figure of $1.86bn does not appear in insitro's release, so it is not used here.

insitro's founder and chief executive, Daphne Koller, said in the release: “By applying AI to these complex datasets, we can unlock greater discovery power and reveal novel genetic insights”. AstraZeneca published its own release, which could not be opened from here.

• Confirmed insitro receives $40 million upfront and is eligible for up to approximately $1.46 billion in potential discovery, development and commercial milestones, plus single-digit royalties. insitro
• Confirmed AstraZeneca will lead all clinical development, regulatory work and commercialisation. insitro
• Reported Reuters reports AstraZeneca will pay $40 million up front. Reuters, via KSL