Drug discovery startup Insilico Medicine and Italian pharmaceutical company Menarini Group announced their second licensing agreement, targeting unmet needs in oncology with a novel AI-discovered preclinical asset.
The agreement grants Stemline Therapeutics, a subsidiary of Menarini, global rights to develop and commercialize a selective small molecule inhibitor with broad anti-tumor activity.
Developed using Insilico's Chemistry42 AI platform, the asset successfully completed preclinical trials.
Under the terms, Insilico will receive a $20 million upfront payment, with the deal's total potential value exceeding $550 million through development, regulatory and commercial milestones, plus tiered royalties.
The partnership follows Menarini's 2024 acquisition of MEN2312, another AI-discovered asset targeting KAT6 inhibitors for breast cancer. MEN2312 rapidly progressed into clinical trials.
"We are thrilled to expand our collaboration with Insilico, a leader in generative AI," Elcin Barker Ergun, CEO of the Menarini Group, said in a statement. "This partnership allows us to address critical gaps in oncology treatment and reach more patients globally with innovative therapies."
THE LARGER TREND
This partnership highlights the potential of AI to revolutionize pharmaceutical innovation, enabling faster development of targeted therapies and the growing role of generative AI (genAI) in accelerating drug discovery and development.
The technology is being leveraged for precision medicine, addressing critical unmet needs in cancer treatment and accelerating timelines from discovery to clinical application.
Major technology companies, including Google DeepMind and its AlphaProteo project are part of the evolution, as well as numerous startups across the globe, including Israeli startup CytoReason, which recently received $80 million in a funding round.
In October, AION Labs launched ProPhet, a startup using AI to accelerate drug discovery by identifying high-affinity small molecules for challenging protein targets, aiming to refine early-stage processes and reduce time and costs.
IBM and German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim have also partnered to leverage IBM's advanced large-scale neural network architectures to accelerate the discovery of therapeutic antibodies for treating cancer, autoimmune disorders, infectious diseases and other medical conditions.
In June 2024, Australian researchers developed PSICHIC, an AI tool that decodes protein-molecule interactions from sequence data without costly 3D rendering.
The tool screens drug candidates, profiles selectivity, and distinguishes functional effects, streamlining and lowering the cost of drug discovery.
A South Korea-based collection of research institutes is also plugging in the power of AI to accelerate cancer drug discovery in a four-phase project, the latest in a series of government-backed initiatives leveraging machine learning and big data.
