Isomorphic signs up Lilly, Novartis for $3bn AI drug hunt
Demis Hassabis, CEO and founder of Isomorphic Labs
Alphabet’s artificial intelligence start-up Isomorphic Labs has made a splash at the start of the JP Morgan Healthcare conference this week, announcing its first pharma partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novartis, worth almost $3 billion.
The company – led by Google DeepMind Founder Demis Hassabis and formed just over two years ago – will apply its AI engine to the discovery of small-molecule therapeutics for multiple therapeutic targets across the two strategic-level partnerships.
Isomorphic is getting $37.5 million upfront from Novartis to get the ball rolling on three undisclosed drug targets, along with research funding and another $1.2 billion in milestone payments tied to the achievement of various objectives. The Lilly deal covers multiple targets and includes $45 million upfront and up to $1.7 billion at the back end.
Google parent Alphabet set up Isomorphic in 2021 to tap into the tech giant’s AI-powered AlphaFold engine that, in 2020, became the first to solve the tricky problem of predicting protein folding, unlocking new ways to research how diseases affect the body and develop new medicines that can modify the activity of disease-related proteins.
Since then, it has been used to model the 3D structure of nearly all the 20,000 or so proteins expressed by the human genome and the proteomes of other organisms used as experimental models. Its latest iteration, AlphaFold 2, has had its capabilities extended to include small molecules and nucleic acids, and in 2021 was made freely available to qualified researchers around the world, with well over a million users already signed up to use it.
Hassabis – who won the prestigious Lasker prize last year, along with John Jumper, in recognition of AlphaFold’s importance to medical research – said that the alliance with Novartis and Lilly will allow it to combine its AI platform with the “massive computing power” at the disposal of the two big pharma partners, as well as their expertise in areas like medicinal chemistry and drug development.
“The focus we share on advancing groundbreaking drug design approaches and appreciation of state-of-the-art science makes [these] partnership[s] particularly compelling,” he added.
Isomorphic operates autonomously within Alphabet, with its own resources and an exclusive focus on the application of AI to drug discovery.
Fiona Marshall, president of biomedical research at Novartis, said the that AI technologies like AlphaFold “hold the potential to transform how we discover new drugs and accelerate our ability to deliver life-changing medicines for patients.”
