Exscientia Enters Strategic Drug Discovery Collaboration With GSK

(RTTNews) - Exscientia said it has entered into a strategic drug discovery collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK, GSK.L). During this collaboration, Exscientia will apply its AI enabled platform and combine this with the expertise of GSK, in order to discover novel and selective small molecules for up to 10 disease-related targets, nominated by GSK across multiple therapeutic areas.

Exscientia will receive research payments from GSK to undertake new discovery programmes with nominated targets with the goal of delivering pre-clinical candidates.

In addition to research funding, Exscientia is eligible to receive near-term lead and pre-clinical candidate milestones if all objectives are achieved. The total amount payable by GSK to Exscientia on achieving these milestones is £33 million, if all 10 projects are advanced. No further financial details have been disclosed.

As part of this collaboration, Exscientia is incentivised to reduce the number of compounds required for synthesis and assay in order to achieve lead and candidate compound goals. This is in response to observations that early stages of drug discovery have not been positively impacted by technologies that have delivered significant efficiencies to other fields.

Exscientia will apply both its 'Big Data' resources comprising, among other things, medicinal chemistry and large-scale bio-assays, and its AI-driven algorithms to design novel molecules that fulfil the requirements of the lead and candidate criteria.