Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”), a clinical stage end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, on Tuesday announced it has entered into a strategic collaboration with EQRx, a company committed to developing and delivering innovative medicines to patients at radically lower prices.

The collaboration leverages Insilico’s end-to-end AI-driven Pharma.AI platform to discover novel small molecule drug candidates for multiple targets, along with EQRx’s innovative business model to accelerate drug development and patient access to novel medicines at affordable prices.

Pursuant to the collaboration agreement, the parties will identify and select up to three therapeutics targets leveraging Insilico’s AI-driven platform, Pharma. AI. Insilico will lead the drug discovery from small molecule hit identification through lead optimization and preclinical candidate nomination to Investigational New Drug (IND) application. EQRx will assume responsibility for driving clinical development, regulatory activities and commercialization. Insilico has the option to invest in the product candidate(s) at various clinical development stages in return for increased commercialization profits.

Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine said:

Both EQRx and Insilico Medicine strive to accelerate the discovery and development of new medicines and make effective therapeutics more accessible and affordable. This partnership will combine our end-to-end AI-powered drug discovery capabilities with EQRx’s innovative partnership model and expertise in clinical development and patient access to accelerate the discovery and development of innovative therapies.

Carlos Garcia-Echeverria, PhD, chief of Rx Creation at EQRx said:

We are pleased to partner with Insilico Medicine, a leader in AI-based drug discovery. This collaboration will further expand our early-stage R&D efforts to fuel potential pipeline growth as we continue to apply the best of today’s innovation in biomedical sciences and digital solutions to discover high-quality, innovative and more affordable medicines.

A co-development partnership between EQRx and Insilico in which each party will be entitled to a share of the profits proportional to their respective levels of investment.