insitro, a pioneer in machine learning-driven drug discovery, and Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY) have announced the extension of their collaboration, which will focus on leveraging insitro's AI-enabled ChemML™ platform to discover and optimize next-generation small molecule therapeutics for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a devastating, progressive neurodegenerative disease.

This new phase of the collaboration builds on the initial success of identifying a novel, high-confidence ALS drug target at record speed by uncovering the shared underlying pathology of the disease. The ChemML platform, which insitro describes as an end-to-end drug design system, seamlessly integrates advanced machine learning models with capabilities such as proprietary Quantitative Adaptive Libraries (QALs) to generate large-scale drug-target binding data, predictive modeling for pharmacological properties like ADMET, and a robust, AI-driven iterative "design-make-test" loop powered by a large compute cluster.

The collaboration extension includes up to $20 million in new funding over one year, and the successful delivery of a new therapeutic could ultimately yield over $2 billion in aggregate discovery, development, regulatory, and commercial milestone payments to insitro, in addition to royalties. Both companies share an unwavering commitment to rapidly translating these novel targets into advanced small-molecule leads and developing truly transformative, disease-modifying treatments that address both sporadic and familial forms of ALS.