Exscientia currently has two active collaborations with Bristol Myers Squibb, which together focus on multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology and immunology. Earlier this year, the two companies announced an AI-driven drug delivery collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb.
As part of the agreement, Bristol Myers Squibb will be responsible for clinical and commercial development of the drug candidate. Under the terms of the agreement, Exscientia will receive a $20 million option exercise fee with the potential for additional development milestones as well as tiered royalties on any product sales.
The in-licensed candidate targets a critical immunological kinase that historically has proven difficult to target due to the need for a combination of potency, selectivity, and overall drug-like properties. To design a candidate that overcame these issues, Exscientia used its end-to-end platform to drive the discovery process, including AI-driven design, structural biology, chemistry, and pharmacology, as well as late-stage preclinical studies.
Andrew Hopkins, chief executive officer of Exscientia commented, “We are focused on using our patient-first AI technology to design precision engineered drugs against challenging drug product profiles. We are seeing great efficiency from our platform. This drug candidate molecule was just the 150th novel compound to be designed and tested and it was identified within 11 months of starting drug design. In partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb and its world-class research, clinical and commercialization capabilities, we look forward to advancing this candidate into the next stage of development.”
Rupert Vessey, president of Research & Early Development at Bristol Myers Squibb said, “We are pleased to in-license our first drug candidate resulting from our strategic collaboration with Exscientia. Artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to play important roles in drugdiscovery and Exscientia has delivered a promising development candidate in the field of immunology. We look forward to our continued collaboration and further advancing this candidatefor the potential benefit of patients with unmet medical need.”
