AstraZeneca bets on insitro for MASH and cardiomyopathy: $40 million upfront to hunt causal targets with AI
AstraZeneca signed a new strategic drug discovery collaboration and licensing agreement with AI therapeutics company insitro to identify novel targets and advance new programmes for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) and cardiomyopathies. insitro will apply its Virtual Human AI platform, which combines large-scale human and cellular data with AI-enabled target identification and medicine design, to identify causal disease biology and move AstraZeneca-nominated targets from discovery to development candidate. insitro receives a $40 million upfront payment and is eligible for up to approximately $1.46 billion in development and commercial milestones plus single-digit royalties, while AstraZeneca holds exclusive worldwide rights to selected programmes.