A clinical-stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, Insilico Medicine has announced an expanded research collaboration with Eli Lilly a global pharmaceutical leader, to jointly discover and advance innovative therapies.

This partnership leverages Insilico's validated Pharma.AI platforms—which include AI for target discovery, molecule generation, and clinical trial prediction—along with the company's deep drug discovery expertise, combining them with Lilly's extensive development and disease expertise.

Under the agreement, Insilico will utilize its AI platform to generate, design, and optimize candidate compounds against targets defined by the collaboration. Financially, Insilico is eligible to receive over $100 million, encompassing an upfront payment, milestone payments upon achieving specific development goals, and tiered royalties on net sales should any resulting drug products be commercialized.

This collaboration represents a significant deepening of the relationship between the two companies, which began in 2023 with an AI-based software licensing agreement. By harnessing state-of-the-art AI and automation technologies, Insilico has demonstrated a remarkable improvement in the efficiency of preclinical drug development, notably accelerating the process from project initiation to preclinical candidate (PCC) nomination to an average of 12 to 18 months per program, a substantial reduction compared to the traditional timeline of three to six years. Furthermore, this efficiency is achieved with significantly fewer resources, with only 60 to 200 molecules synthesized and tested per program. The company has successfully nominated 20 preclinical candidates between 2021 and 2024, underscoring the power of its AI-driven approach to deliver transformative therapies and address urgent patient needs worldwide, as highlighted by Insilico's Founder and Co-CEO, Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD.