Insilico Medicine and SK Biopharmaceuticals forge $2.5 billion AI drug discovery partnership

Insilico and SK Biopharmaceuticals partner to develop AI-driven neuroimmune therapies

Insilico Medicine ("Insilico",3696.HK), a clinical-stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, and SK Biopharmaceuticals, a Korean-based company leads the way in biotech innovation with groundbreaking drug research, development, and commercialization worldwide, announced a research and development collaboration at the BIO 2026 International Convention to discover AI-enabled innovative drug candidates in the neuroimmune area of the central nervous system (CNS). Neuroimmune disorders, including neuroinflammatory, neurodegenerative, and rare neurological disorders, remain among the most challenging therapeutic areas in modern medicine, with significant unmet patient need and historically low clinical success rates. Under the agreement, Insilico will leverage its proprietary Pharma.AI platform, which spans target validation, generative chemistry, and molecule optimization, together with its preclinical drug discovery expertise to discover, design, and optimize novel candidates for neuroimmune indications. SK Biopharmaceuticals will contribute its extensive development and clinical capabilities in neuroimmune disorders, steering the late-stage development and commercialization of all resulting programs. Together, the two companies aim to accelerate discovery timelines and advance next-generation therapies for patients worldwide. Financially, Insilico will be eligible to receive up to $18 million in upfront and near-term milestone payments. The total potential deal value exceeds $2.5 billion, including development, regulatory, and commercial milestone payments, as well as single-digit royalties on net sales upon commercialization. Notably, the partnership sets a record by total potential deal value that Insilico has secured with APAC partners to date. "This collaboration represents an important milestone in expanding our growth beyond epilepsy into new CNS therapeutic areas, building on the deep CNS expertise we have established through the successful development and commercialization of Cenobamate," said Donghoon Lee, President and CEO of SK Biopharmaceuticals. "By combining Insilico's AI-powered drug discovery platform with SK Biopharmaceuticals' clinical development and U.S. commercialization capabilities, we believe we can accelerate the discovery of innovative CNS therapies for patients. Beyond a single program, we see this collaboration as a scalable and repeatable growth platform that can be leveraged for future target discovery and development opportunities." We are delighted to announce this great news at the 2026 BIO International Convention, which underscores the tremendous power of industry communication and collaboration in accelerating progress in healthcare. SK Biopharmaceuticals is a visionary partner, merging global leadership and commercialization expertise with a forward-thinking embrace of AI. By uniting Insilico's AI-driven target-to-candidate engine with SK Biopharmaceuticals' deep CNS mastery, we aim to unlock breakthrough therapies, spanning both traditional small molecules and advanced new modalities, to address critical patient needs." Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, Founder, co-CEO, and CBO, Insilico Medicine As an AI-native biotechnology company, Insilico is redefining the efficiency of preclinical drug development through its advanced AI and automation platform, setting a new standard for the industry. While traditional early-stage drug discovery typically takes 2.5 to 4 years, Insilico has consistently reached preclinical candidate (PCC) nomination in an average of just 12 to 18 months, with only 60 to 200 molecules synthesized and tested per program. Since 2021, the company has nominated 31 PCCs, 13 of which have received IND approval or clearance. While expanding the practical applications of its technology in drug discovery and life science research, Insilico is also continuously enhancing the performance of its AI platform. Drawing on extensive experience and datasets from its training platform, the company has distilled thousands of benchmarks and integrated them into MMAI Gym. Serving as both a "trainer and benchmark" for scientific AI, MMAI Gym enables organizations to train models for domain-specific reasoning while rigorously evaluating their performance on real-world tasks, advancing the path toward pharma superintelligence. To date, Human Longevity and Liquid AI have collaborated with Insilico, joining as partners of MMAI Gym.

AI drug discovery firm Insilico Medicine signs deal with Korea's SK Biopharmaceuticals worth $2.5 billion | Fortune

Insilico Medicine, the Hong Kong-listed AI drug discovery company, has signed a partnership with Korea's SK Biopharmaceuticals to help develop new drugs for neuroimmune conditions in a deal valued at more than $2.5 billion. Inscilico will use its Pharma.AI platform to help design new candidates for neuroimmune treatments, while SK Biopharmaceuticals will then steer the late-stage development and commercialization of discovered treatments. While Insilico is expected to get $18 million in payments in the near-term, the deal could bring in up to $2.5 billion if the firm reaches certain development and commercial milestones, in addition to royalties. The agreement marks Insilico's largest tie‑up to date with an Asia‑Pacific partner; it's also the second deal of this size that Insilico has agreed to with Big Pharma. In late March, Insilico signed a deal valued at $2.75 billion with U.S. drug giant Eli Lilly to target the "best-in-class, novel oral therapeutics in preclinical development." (Andrew Adams, Eli Lilly's group vice president of molecular discovery, also serves as the chair of Insilico's new "Longevity Board"). "We want to be the SpaceX of the pharmaceutical industry," Alex Zhavoronkov, co-CEO of Insilico Medicine told Fortune. "The more I scale, the better my AI gets. I want to get to this escape velocity where nobody can even compete." Insilico Medicine's shares rose 5.6% in Hong Kong trading on Monday, surging after the deal was announced at midday local time. The firm's shares have risen by 35% since its IPO in late December. SK Biopharmaceuticals's shares dropped 1.7% on Monday, building on a 30% decline for the year thus far. "By combining Insilico's AI-powered drug discovery platform with SK Biopharmaceuticals' clinical development and U.S. commercialization capabilities, we believe we can accelerate the discovery of innovative CNS [central nervous systems] therapies for patients," Donghoon Lee, president and CEO of SK Biopharmaceuticals, said in a statement. "We see this collaboration as a scalable and repeatable growth platform that can be leveraged for future target discovery and development opportunities." SK Biopharmaceuticals is part of Korea's SK Group. The chaebol has risen in prominence over the past year due to its ownership of SK Hynix, one of the world's most important producers of memory chips and a major supplier to Nvidia. On Monday, SK Hynix became South Korea's most valuable company, overtaking longtime No. 1 company Samsung Electronics. "Korea now has substantial resources driven by the boom in AI. Now that innovation is flowing into pharmaceuticals." Zhavoronkov says. "More Korean companies will try to play a bigger role in pharmaceutical research and development, clinical trials, manufacturing and sales." "Korean companies are a bit more adventurous," Zhavaronkov adds. "They're willing to take a little bit more risk to get ultra-high novelty," particularly in neuroimmunology, which he projects could become a "trillion dollar opportunity." Insilico's model is to use AI to more rapidly discover and develop new drug candidates, screening vast numbers of molecules before moving to clinical trials. The company, which was founded in Boston, Mass. and maintains offices in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Abu Dhabi, has multiple drugs in trials, including one targeting idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a condition where scar tissue forms in the lungs, that's currently in the Phase II stage. Insilico is also riding a broader boom in Asian, and particularly Chinese, biotech. China now accounts for roughly a third of the innovative molecules in global drug pipelines and attracts about three‑quarters of Asia's biotech venture funding, according to a report from ING released last week. "If you use China as a platform, you're going to gain two years of speed at the pre-clinical level," Zhavoronkov explains.