Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has concluded a deal worth up to $5.3 billion (£3.9bn) with China’s CSPC Pharmaceutical to use AI technology to help develop oral drugs for a range of chronic health conditions.
The deal includes an upfront payment of $110m to Hong Kong-listed CSPC, which said it would use its AI-driven, dual-engine drug discovery platform to analyse the binding patterns of target proteins with existing compound molecules to identify those with the highest chance of success in clinical trials.
Sharon Barr, head of biopharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca, said the collaboration showed the firm’s “commitment to innovation” to tackle chronic diseases that affect more than two billion people worldwide.
“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,” Barr said.
The companies said they would be working on preclinical candidates for multiple targets with the potential “to treat diseases across chronic indications” including a therapy for immunological diseases, without giving further details of the specific conditions they would be targeting.
Under the deal CSPC is eligible for up to $1.62bn in potential development milestone payments and up to $3.6bn in sales milestones in addition to single-digit royalties if any resulting drugs should arrive at market.
AstraZeneca previously licensed the Shijiazhuang-based biotech firm’s preclinical cardiovascular disease drug for a $100m upfront payment last October.
As part of plans to further its ambitions in China AstraZeneca recently announced a global strategic research and development centre in Beijing as part of a $2.5bn investment in the city.
The company’s plans in the region were clouded when Chinese authorities detained its former China head Leon Wang last year as part of an investigation into potential illegal drug importation.
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