Eli Lilly has teamed up with insitro to develop treatments for metabolic diseases, combining insitro’s artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning (ML) platform with Lilly’s drug delivery technology.
The deal, which involves three strategic agreements, highlights a “new paradigm” for collaborations between major pharmaceutical companies and smaller biotechs, say the companies, with insitro getting an option to licence Lilly’s GalNAc delivery technology, and Lilly being eligible for royalties.
The GalNAc technology will be used in the first two agreements, combining it with two small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) molecules that insitro developed to improve the treatment of conditions such as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). Eli Lilly is already a major player in the metabolic disorder space, highlighted by its blockbuster diabetes drug Mounjaro (tirzepatide) which pulled in $5.2bn global sales in 2023, as per Lilly's financials.
GalNAc is a widely used delivery method for siRNA therapies, and known for its effectiveness in reaching liver cells. Several US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved medicines use GalNAc technology including Alnylam Pharmaceuticals’ Givlaari (givosiran), Oxlumo (lumasiran), Amvuttra (vutrisiran) and Novartis’s Leqvio (inclisiran).
Under the third agreement, insitro and Lilly will collaborate to develop an antibody for a novel metabolic disease target. Both companies will work together through early preclinical stages, with insitro taking responsibility for development and commercialisation after candidate selection. This partnership is supported by Lilly’s external biotech collaboration unit, Catalyze360-ExploR&D.
The San Francisco-based company’s tech combines ML, human genetics, and functional genomics to generate in vitro models that enable a better understanding of disease progression, propose candidate targets, and predict responses to potential therapeutic candidates. The tech has previously attracted big pharma, with insitro sealing deals with Gilead and Bristol Myers Squibb in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
insitro’s CEO Daphne Koller highlighted the potential of the company’s platform to address metabolic disease at its origin using its technology. “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.”
The company launched in 2018 with $100m under its belt from ARCH Venture Partners, Foresite Capital, a16z, GV and Third Rock Ventures. In May 2020 insitro raised $143m in a Series B round led by Silicon Valley VC Andreessen Horowitz.
AI continues to be a buzzword in pharma, but its rapid rise in scientific research was reinforced this week with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to three scientists for their foundational work using AI to predict and design proteins.
According to a report on GlobalData’s Pharma Intelligence Center, the AI market was worth $103bn in 2023. By 2030, it will have grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 39% to over $1tn.
GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology.
