
US-based drug discovery and development company insitro has executed three strategic agreements with Eli Lilly and Co. (Lilly), focused on new medicines for metabolic diseases.
The collaboration aims to advance potential new drugs to treat metabolic diseases, including metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD).
It will combine insitro’s machine learning (ML) platforms directed at early biology discovery, with Lilly’s expertise in advanced drug delivery and metabolic disease biology.
The new drugs will be developed based on targets identified by insitro using its artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML)-based platform.
The three agreements will support its efforts to conduct the investigational new drug (IND) studies of its pipeline programmes, said insitro.
Insitro founder and CEO Daphne Koller said: “We are innovating not only in our biology discovery, but also how we partner with industry leaders like Lilly to accelerate our therapeutic programmes toward the clinic.
“Our proprietary AI/ML platform, leveraging multimodal data at scale, computational power, and genetics, has identified several high-value targets with extensive support in human genetics and translatable models.
“These could help provide transformative impact for patients with metabolic disease by addressing it at its root, and bringing together the best of biotech and pharma skill sets accelerates our impact.”
Under the first two agreements, insitro can licence clinical-stage, ternary N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) delivery technology from Lilly.
It will combine the GalNAc technology with its two distinct small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) molecules, specifically directed toward a different target in the liver.
Under the third agreement, insitro and Lilly will jointly discover and develop an antibody for a third novel target for metabolic disease.
The two companies will work together on the early preclinical development activities until the development candidate nomination.
Also, insitro will assume the responsibility for all the development and commercialisation efforts.
It will partner with Catalyze360-ExploR&D, Lilly’s external research initiative focused on learning, scientific know-how, and best-in-class research and development capabilities.
In all three agreements, insitro will retain full global rights to the programmes, while Lilly is eligible to receive potential milestones and royalties.
Recently, Lilly unveiled its plans to invest $4.5bn in a new facility, dubbed Lilly Medicine Foundry, for advanced manufacturing and drug development.