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Sanofi taps into Insilico Medicine’s AI platform in deal worth up to $1.2bn


With a presence in Hong Kong and New York, Insilico was founded in 2014 with a mission to invent and deploy artificial intelligence tech for pharma and biotech companies to streamline R&D and ‘transform the way therapeutics and materials are discovered’.

Its automated AI platform is targeted at precision medicine with the promise of ‘substantially’ cutting costs and development time. Its work focuses on key areas of cancer, fibrosis, immunity, central nervous system diseases and aging-related diseases.

The high-level tie-up is a clear sign that AI is viewed as a key tool for the future of drug discovery, according to analysts.

Identifying, synthesizing and advancing therapeutic compounds

Under the terms of the agreement, Sanofi will pay Insilico Medicine a total of up to $21.5m for upfront and target nomination fees to benefit from Insilico’s end-to-end Pharma.AI platform and gain access to a team of interdisciplinary drug discovery scientists to identify, synthesize, and advance high-quality lead therapeutic compounds up to development candidate stage.

Additional payments will follow if key research, development, and sales milestones are met: with the potential for these to reach up to $1bn.

The collaboration also includes mid-single to up to low double-digit tiered royalties for any products developed.

“We look forward to working with Insilico Medicine, a demonstrated leader in AI-powered drug discovery,”​ said Changchun Xiao, Head of China Research at Sanofi.  “This collaboration will leverage our complementary capabilities, as well as the co-location of our scientific teams, to boost the drug discovery efforts of the Sanofi Institute for Biomedical Research (SIBR), Sanofi’s R&D center in China.”


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