AstraZeneca has inked a billion-dollar AI drug discovery partnership and licensing deal with insitro to identify novel targets and therapies for a range of cardiometabolic diseases. Through this strategic agreement, the organizations will work in tandem to create drugs that fulfil unmet needs and address the underlying drivers of disease in both metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) and heart muscle-impacting cardiomyopathies.
Billion-Dollar Licensing Partnership
In exchange for an upfront payment of $40m and approximately $1.46bn in potential development and commercial milestones, AstraZeneca will secure the exclusive global rights to develop selected programmes generated from this AI drug discovery collaboration. The UK-Swedish pharma giant will also award insitro single-digit royalties on global sales of the fruits of this collaboration, provided they successfully make it to the commercial market.
Targeting Unmet Needs in CVRM
At the heart of this partnership is insitro’s Virtual Human AI platform, which is trained on large-scale human and cellular data. The biotech enterprise utilizes this technology to identify causal disease biology. According to insitro’s founder and CEO, Daphne Koller, applying artificial intelligence to complex datasets around MASH and cardiomyopathies can allow the pair to “unlock greater discovery power” and reveal new insights into the genetics behind such conditions.
“Our platform simultaneously deconvolutes disease biology and identifies causal drivers of disease pathologies,” Koller commented. She noted that pairing this expertise with AstraZeneca will allow the duo to scale with the potential to more rapidly progress novel programmes through the development stages to patients.
This partnership aligns with broader operational goals as AstraZeneca looks to deepen its legacy in the cardiovascular, renal and metabolic (CVRM) segment. Currently, the pharma company holds a plethora of marketed medicines in this disease area, including the blockbuster SGLT2 inhibitor Farxiga (dapagliflozin). This asset is now subject to generic erosion due to its US loss of market exclusivity earlier this year.
Expanding Presence in the MASH Market
The agreement marks a doubling down on the intent of AstraZeneca to establish a stronger footprint in the MASH market. The organization is currently exploring the potential of a small molecule FAP inhibitor, AZD2389, in Phase II trials. The company hopes this candidate will demonstrate better efficacy than its former antisense oligonucleotide MASH candidate, AZD2693, which it scrapped after producing lacklustre results in a Phase II study.
AstraZeneca is moving toward the MASH market as the sector becomes increasingly lucrative. A recent industry report forecasts that the segment will balloon from a value of $802.3m in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38.2% to a value of $20.3bn by 2032. This exceptional growth will primarily be fuelled by the anticipated launch of several pipeline candidates and the uptake of established drugs such as Madrigal Pharmaceutical’s first-to-market Rezdiffra (resmetirom) and Novo’s blockbuster glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) therapy, Wegovy (semaglutide). Furthermore, an anticipated uptick in the use of non-invasive tests for diagnosing and managing the disease will support commercial expansion.
With this shifting landscape, analysts point to burgeoning competition in this therapeutic space. The flames of market competition are stoked by the potential emergence of further incretin therapies and alternative investigational antifibrotics entering commercial circulation, elevating the critical industry role of advancing targeted therapies for cardiometabolic diseases.
Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly turning to AI-driven drug discovery to accelerate research and identify new therapeutic candidates. Earlier this year, AbbVie partnered with Iambic to advance AI-powered drug discovery across immunology, neuroscience and oncology.
