Eli Lilly Licenses Insilico AI Drug Candidates for $2.75B

Eli Lilly and Company, the U.S. pharmaceutical giant, announced a global licensing and research collaboration with Hong Kong-based Insilico Medicine on Sunday, granting Lilly exclusive rights to develop, manufacture, and commercialize a portfolio of preclinical oral drug candidates discovered using artificial intelligence. The deal, valued at up to $2.75 billion, includes an upfront payment of $115 million to Insilico, with additional payments contingent on achieving development, regulatory, and commercial milestones, along with royalties on net sales.

The agreement focuses on candidates targeting areas such as metabolic diseases, though specific details about the assets remain undisclosed. Insilico recently updated its pipeline to indicate that one candidate targeting GLP-1, a hormone involved in blood sugar regulation, has been outlicensed to an undisclosed partner. This partnership builds on a prior AI-based software licensing agreement between the two companies signed in 2023. As part of the deal, Insilico will join Lilly's Gateway Labs, a biotech development community aimed at fostering innovation.

Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico, praised Lilly as an ideal...