Boehringer Ingelheim has entered a potential $1 billion, multi-year collaboration with AI-driven drug discovery company Envisagenics to investigate and validate cancer targets that are highly specific to tumors.
The German pharmaceutical company plans to use Envisagenics’ SpliceCore platform, which applies artificial intelligence to the study of RNA splicing. Although Envisagenics did not disclose the detailed financial structure of the agreement, co-founder and CEO Maria Pineda said the upfront payment and future milestones will help fund the company’s lead internally developed CNS program through clinical development.
SpliceCore combines AI with large-scale transcriptomic analysis to examine more than 14 million RNA splicing events. The platform ranks potential therapeutic targets while assessing factors such as disease specificity, how broadly a target occurs among patients and whether it is suitable for therapeutic development. Abnormal RNA splicing can result in proteins that are improperly formed or fail to function correctly, contributing to disease.
Envisagenics uses alternative RNA splicing to identify targets that are particularly concentrated in cancer cells while minimizing their presence in healthy tissue. Under the new collaboration, Boehringer will be able to examine targets that Envisagenics has already identified and assess their potential for development into antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), T-cell engagers (TCEs) and multispecific antibodies.
Pineda said the approach could provide a wider therapeutic window when a protein variant or RNA-splicing isoform is found exclusively, or almost exclusively, in tumor cells. If the target is absent from healthy tissue, she explained, a therapy directed against it could potentially reduce unintended effects on normal cells and improve treatment tolerability compared with less tumor-selective approaches.
The agreement expands on Envisagenics’ earlier oncology research collaborations with Johnson & Johnson, Bristol Myers Squibb and Biogen. Boehringer will have the opportunity to obtain exclusive licenses for selected targets and subsequently pursue their development and commercialization.
Pineda said the companies are closely aligned in their interest in creating new therapeutic approaches and described Boehringer as a particularly suitable partner because of its expertise in modalities such as multispecific antibodies, TCEs and ADCs. She said those capabilities could complement Envisagenics’ target-discovery technology.
Boehringer has previously invested in AI-enabled target discovery. In June 2025, the company entered a $15 million oncology and autoimmune research collaboration with Immunai focused on identifying targets associated with dysfunctional T cells. It also partnered with OpenProtein.AI on the development of specialized antibodies.
Mark Petronczki, who leads oncology research at Boehringer Ingelheim, said collaborating with external partners is an important component of the company’s strategy for expanding its oncology pipeline. He added that alternative RNA splicing represents a relatively underexplored source of therapeutic targets and highlighted Envisagenics’ ability to investigate this area.
The scientific roots of Envisagenics’ platform trace back to the laboratory where researchers developed the technology underlying Spinraza, the first FDA-approved RNA-based treatment for spinal muscular atrophy. Spinraza works by correcting the RNA-splicing defect responsible for the disease.
The new funding will support further development of both SpliceCore and Envisagenics’ internal pipeline, which spans potential applications ranging from CNS disorders to cancer. Pineda specifically highlighted ENV-375, a preclinical program being developed for people with ALS, as one candidate that could benefit from the collaboration by advancing toward human testing.
Envisagenics has entered a major multi-year research collaboration and option agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim to advance tumor-specific targets for precision cancer therapies. Announced on September 22, 2026, the collaboration focuses on targets identified through Envisagenics’ AI-powered SpliceCore platform.
Under the agreement, Envisagenics is eligible to receive more than $1 billion in potential payments, including an upfront payment, research funding, option fees, development, regulatory and commercial milestones, as well as royalties on future product sales. The companies have not disclosed the individual amounts of these components.
Envisagenics and AI-Powered RNA Splicing
The partnership centers on Envisagenics’ SpliceCore platform, which combines artificial intelligence, large-scale transcriptomics and experimental validation to identify potential therapeutic targets arising from alternative RNA splicing. The platform has screened more than 14 million distinct splicing events to help identify targets based on disease specificity, patient prevalence and therapeutic suitability.
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