AstraZeneca Signs Nearly $5.3 Bln AI-enabled Research Deal With China's CSPC Pharma

(RTTNews) - British drug major AstraZeneca Plc. (AZN.L, AZN) announced Friday that it has entered into a strategic research collaboration with Shijiazhuang City-based CSPC Pharmaceuticals Group Lts, which is focused on AI-enabled research.

Under the deal terms, CSPC will receive an upfront payment of $110 million. It is also eligible to receive up to $1.62 billion in potential development milestone payments and up to $3.6 billion in sales milestone payments, plus potential single digit royalties based on annual net sales of the products.

In the research collaboration, AstraZeneca and CSPC agree to discover and develop pre-clinical candidates for multiple targets with the potential to treat diseases across chronic indications. These include a pre-clinical small molecule oral therapy for immunological diseases.

The research will be carried out by CSPC, in Shijiazhuang City and will utilise their AI-driven, dual-engine efficient drug discovery platform. The platform uses AI technology to analyse the binding patterns of target proteins with existing compound molecules, conduct targeted optimization, with the aim of selecting highly effective small molecules with excellent developability.

AstraZeneca will have rights to exercise options for exclusive licenses to develop and commercialise worldwide candidates identified under this agreement.

The company said the collaboration aims to advance the discovery and development of novel oral candidates, with the potential to treat diseases across multiple indications.

Sharon Barr, Executive Vice President and Head of BioPharmaceuticals R&D said, "This strategic research collaboration underscores our commitment to innovation to tackle chronic diseases which impact over two billion people globally. Forming strong collaborations allows us to leverage our complementary scientific expertise to support the rapid discovery of high-quality novel therapeutic molecules to deliver the next-generation medicines." The collaboration follows AstraZeneca's recently announced $2.5bn investment in Beijing.

In London, AstraZeneca shares were trading at 11,006.00 pence, down 0.22%.