Sanofi and AI specialist Aqemia enter $140m drug discovery partnership
06 Dec 2023
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Source: PMLiVE
Sanofi and artificial intelligence (AI) specialist Aqemia have entered into a multi-year research collaboration worth $140m to discover small molecule drug candidates across several therapeutic areas.
The partnership will combine Sanofi’s research and development capabilities with Aqemia’s platform, which brings together deep physics and generative AI at scale to identify novel drug molecules for therapeutic targets.
Unlike typical AI-based platforms that require experimental data to train on, Aqemia says it "tackles drug discovery projects from their earliest stage" by generating its own data with unique quantum physics algorithms.
The collaboration will span the drug discovery journey, from the identification of the first ‘hits' to the selection of the development candidate.
Sanofi will be solely responsible for wet lab research, development and commercialisation activities, with Aqemia eligible to receive up to $140m in upfront and milestone payments across all programmes.
The deal builds on the companies’ existing oncology-focused partnership that was first initiated in 2020 and later extended in 2022.
Jacques Volckmann, Sanofi’s vice president of research and development for France, said: “This new partnership with Aqemia is part of an ongoing story that began with our French teams three years ago.
"During this period, we have followed with attention and enthusiasm the development of [its] technology that combines theoretical physics and generative AI."
Maximilien Levesque, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aqemia, added: "This whole new step is about scaling our respective expertise to multiple projects and supporting Sanofi in discovering novel chemical matter at scale with our unique technology – including on difficult projects with limited chemical data upfront and hard issues like selectivity."
Matt Truppo, global head of research platforms at Sanofi, said at the time of the announcement: “By combining Sanofi’s proprietary data sets, digital infrastructure, AI and data science capabilities, and drug development expertise with BioMap’s protein large language models, high-performance computing, and deep understanding of AI, we can optimise the process of discovery and development of breakthrough biotherapeutics.”
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