Genesis Therapeutics’ AI drug discovery platform, GEMS, has gained popularity and now attracted the attention of Gilead Sciences with a $35M partnership.
In a major deal, Gilead will pay $35 million to Genesis as part of a new partnership for AI-based drug discovery focused on three undisclosed targets. Additionally, Gilead “will have the option to nominate additional targets for a predetermined per-target fee,” as stated by the company.
Under the agreement, Gilead will gain exclusive development and commercialization rights to compounds that may be generated from the discovery process. Genesis will be eligible for additional milestone payments and tiered royalties on any identified prospects.
“A lot of promising protein targets have scant training data and, therefore, cannot be modeled using conventional machine learning techniques,” Genesis’ founder and CEO, Evan Feinberg, Ph.D., highlighted in the release. “To solve this problem, we have incorporated solutions into our physical AI platform that allow for drug discovery campaigns on challenging targets.”
The California-headquartered biotech is “excited” to integrate its generative AI and drug discovery capabilities with Gilead’s experienced R&D team, Feinberg added.
Genesis has previously out-licensed with Genentech and Eli Lilly, with the Lilly deal valued at up to $670 million for up to five targets.
Last year, the biotech raised $200 million in a Series B round investment from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Management & Research Company, BlackRock, and NVentures, the venture capital arm of NVIDIA. Other participants in the funding round included T. Rowe Price Associates, Rock Springs Capital, Radical Ventures, and Menlo Ventures.
The funds were intended to support the company’s move into clinical testing for a “wholly-owned pipeline of AI-enabled programs” and to accelerate the growth of its generative and predictive AI methods, the company stated in a Genesis release.
As for Gilead’s other advances in drug discovery, the company invested $20 million this year in Cartography Biosciences, supporting its mission to identify new tumor-selective target antigens and antigen pairs.
