Exscientia and Sanofi Establish Strategic Research Collaboration to Develop AI-Driven Pipeline of Precision-Engineered Medicines

(Europe) Paris-based Sanofi and U.K.-based Exscientia have announced a groundbreaking research collaboration and license agreement to develop up to 15 novel small molecule candidates across oncology and immunology, leveraging Exscientia’s end-to-end AI-driven platform utilizing actual patient samples. The companies have been working together since 2016 and in 2019, Sanofi in-licensed Exscientia’s novel bispecific small molecule candidate capable of targeting two distinct targets in inflammation and immunology.

“We look forward to deepening our work with Exscientia, a leader in leveraging AI to modernize all aspects of drug discovery and development,” said Frank Nestle, Global Head of Research and Chief Scientific Officer, Sanofi. “Sanofi’s collaboration with Exscientia aims to transform how we discover and develop new small molecule medicines for cancer and immune-mediated diseases. Application of sophisticated AI and machine-learning methods will not only shorten drug discovery timelines, but will also help to design higher quality and better targeted medicines for patients.”

Exscientia and Sanofi will collaborate to identify and select target projects, leveraging Exscientia’s personalized medicine platform. The platform enables a “patient-first” approach through integrating primary human tissue samples into early target and drug discovery research. By doing so, Exscientia scientists can integrate patient, disease, and clinically relevant data into decisions on potential new medicine candidates earlier in the drug creation process. In addition to target discovery, Exscientia will lead small molecule drug design and lead optimization activities up to development candidate nomination, with Sanofi assuming responsibility for preclinical and clinical development, manufacturing, and commercialization.

“It is immensely exciting to collaborate with Sanofi with our goal of realizing the full potential of AI to deliver the next generation of cancer and immunology medicines,” said Andrew Hopkins, DPhil, CEO and founder of Exscientia. “Our AI-driven platform can be leveraged across drug discovery, translational research, and development, with applications ranging from improving the precision medicine and quality of drug candidates to enriching for patient selection in clinical trials. Our expanded collaboration with Sanofi will utilize the breadth of our platform to test AI-designed drug candidates against patient tissue models, potentially providing far better accuracy than conventional approaches such as mouse models. When you consider the change this represents – testing candidates against actual human tissue years before a clinical trial – it’s transformative.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Exscientia will receive an upfront cash payment of US$100 million from Sanofi and will be eligible to receive future research, translational, clinical development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments of up to approximately US$5.2 billion in aggregate, if all milestones for all programs are achieved. In the case that Sanofi commercializes a therapeutic from the collaboration, Exscientia will also be eligible to receive tiered royalties on product sales ranging from high-single-digits to mid-teens and an option for clinical co-investment to increase the royalty rate up to 21% on net sales of co-funded products. The upfront cash payment of US$100 million is expected to be reflected in the first quarter 2022 financial results of Exscientia as cash inflows from collaborations and recognized as revenue over the duration of the agreement.