AstraZeneca partners with insitro on $1.5B AI drug discovery
The UK‑Swedish pharma giant and the biotech will use AI to find new drugs for cardiometabolic diseases, aiming for exclusive rights and milestone payments.
17 Oct 2026 0 reads Compiled with AI
AstraZeneca and insitro have signed a worldwide exclusive research collaboration and licensing agreement. In return, AstraZeneca will hold exclusive worldwide rights to advance any programmes chosen by the partnership and will lead clinical development, regulatory work and commercialization.
The partnership will harness insitro’s Virtual Human AI platform, which uses large‑scale human and cellular data to deconvolute disease biology and identify causal drivers. The duo will focus on metabolic dysfunction‑associated steatohepatitis (MASH) and cardiomyopathies, with AstraZeneca nominating targets that will progress from discovery through to development candidates and eventually to patients.