GSK has entered into a multi-year data licence agreement with Ochre Bio, aiming to advance the understanding of liver disease.
GSK will gain access to cellular and perfused human organ platforms and the computational biology of Ochre Bio for generating human liver datasets.
Ochre Bio will also offer non-exclusive access to a wide-ranging library of historical liver data.
The partnership between the companies will extend insights into liver biology, supporting GSK's focus on hepatology.
The goal is to prioritise and speed up the development of new treatments for liver conditions.
Both companies will utilise data to enhance AI models, leading to more targeted experiments for selecting therapeutic targets.
Ochre Bio will provide GSK with data from single-cell sequencing analyses of cell populations in perfused human livers.T
The deal includes data from extensive gene perturbation studies in human liver cells, crucial for identifying potential drug targets and understanding disease mechanisms.
Ochre Bio co-founder and CEO Jack O’Meara stated: “Data innovation is as important as algorithmic innovation when investing in machine learning workflows.
“Both Ochre Bio and GSK share a commitment to providing liver disease patients with more effective medicines, and believe in a data-driven approach to improve therapeutic discovery. These large-scale, causal human datasets will be foundational for our respective liver research and development pipelines.”
The financial terms of the deal include a commitment of $37.5m for co-exclusive and non-exclusive data licences.
GSK AI and machine learning global head and senior vice-president Kim Branson stated: “In addition to our programmes in MASH [metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis] to hepatitis B, we are committed to addressing unmet need in liver disease by generating unique data in human-derived systems.
“Ochre Bio’s platform will provide GSK with foundational data sets to create AI models allowing us to better understand liver function and disease for the development of novel medicines.”
In June 2024 GSK acquired Elsie Biotechnologies for $50m to unlock the potential of oligonucleotide therapeutics.
