Zealand Pharma, Generate Team Up on AI-Designed Protein Drugs
Zealand Pharma and Generate Biomedicines have agreed to design protein drugs for obesity and other metabolic diseases with generative AI. Generate gets $30 million up front and may earn nearly $1.2 billion in milestones on two programs, with an option for a third.
Danish biotechnology company Zealand Pharma and US-listed Generate Biomedicines have signed a collaboration and license agreement covering several drug targets. The partners plan to create multispecific protein drugs aimed at obesity and other metabolic diseases. The design work will run on The Generate Platform, which pairs generative AI with high-throughput experimental validation: proteins are engineered by the models and then refined against laboratory data until they show the intended biological function.
Division of work and money
Generate will lead the research up to the selection of a lead candidate. From that point Zealand Pharma takes over and is responsible for clinical development, regulatory submissions and commercialization worldwide. The agreement starts with two programs and gives the option of adding a third. For the two initial programs Generate receives USD 30 million up front and can earn up to USD 35 million more in early preclinical milestones. In total it is eligible for nearly USD 1.2 billion in milestone payments tied to development, regulatory and commercial goals. Tiered royalties on worldwide net sales of any products that reach the market come on top of that. Cooley LLP advised Zealand Pharma on the deal, and Ropes & Gray LLP advised Generate.
Why the two companies want it
For Zealand Pharma the agreement adds proteins to a toolbox that so far consisted of small molecules and peptides. Chief scientific officer Utpal Singh said this opens new approaches to polypharmacology and fits the company's strategy of widening its platform by combining its metabolic expertise in Copenhagen with multi-modality expertise in Cambridge. For Generate the deal extends its platform into obesity and metabolic disease. Its chief executive Mike Nally said the teams will first define, for each of the two programs, what a strong medicine for patients should look like, and will then use the platform to design multispecific candidates that match or beat that profile.
Zealand Pharma was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Copenhagen, with a US presence in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It reports that more than 10 drug candidates invented by the company have entered clinical development; two of them are already on the market and three more are in late-stage development. Generate, founded in 2018, is a clinical-stage company working where machine learning, biological engineering and medicine meet.
Source: Zealand Pharma