Qiming Venture Partners' portfolio company Insilico Medicine, a clinical stage AI-driven drug discovery company, announced a multi-year, multi-target strategic research collaboration with Sanofi on November 8th Beijing Time. Under the terms of the agreement, the collaboration will leverage Insilico Medicine's AI platform, Pharma.AI, to advance drug development candidates for up to six new targets.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sanofi will pay Insilico Medicine a total of up to $21.5 million covering the upfront and target nomination fees to benefit from Insilico Medicine's end-to-end Pharma.AI platform and gain access to a team of interdisciplinary drug discovery scientists to identify, synthesize, and advance high-quality lead therapeutic compounds up to development candidate stage.

Additional payments will be made if key research, development, and sales milestones are met, and could total up to $1.2 billion. The collaboration also establishes mid-single to up to low double-digit tiered royalties for any products developed.

"We look forward to working with Insilico Medicine, a demonstrated leader in AI-powered drug discovery," said Changchun Xiao, Head of China Research at Sanofi. "This collaboration will leverage our complementary capabilities, as well as the co-location of our scientific teams, to boost the drug discovery efforts of the Sanofi Institute for Biomedical Research (SIBR), Sanofi's R&D center in China."

"We are very happy to collaborate with Sanofi, a company with a clear strategy in AI-powered drug discovery," said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, CEO and founder of Insilico Medicine. "This close collaboration will allow Sanofi to immediately gain the capabilities of one of the top AI startups in addition to enriching their drug discovery pipeline."

"We are thrilled to collaborate with Sanofi. Leveraging Sanofi's strong drug research and development expertise and Insilico Medicine's powerful AI platform, we believe we can accelerate novel therapeutics discovery to address diseases with unmet medical needs," said Feng Ren, PhD, co-CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Insilico Medicine. "Together we will use cutting-edge AI technologies to make significant breakthroughs in drug R&D."