Immunai signs $18M collaboration with AstraZeneca to make cancer drug trials more efficient
The collaboration will focus on clinical decision-making, including dose selection, elucidating mechanisms of action, patient responder vs. non-responder analysis, and biomarker identification, by leveraging the Israeli biotech unicorn’s AI model of the immune system.
Israeli startup Immunai, which has developed a system that maps the human immune system with single-cell granularity, has announced a multi-year collaboration with AstraZeneca. Under the terms of the agreement, Immunai is set to receive $18 million for the initial phase of the collaboration.
The collaboration will focus on clinical decision-making, including dose selection, elucidating mechanisms of action, patient responder vs. non-responder analysis, and biomarker identification, by leveraging Immunai’s AI model of the immune system, the IDE. This collaboration aims to improve the success rates of ongoing clinical trials to maximize research and development productivity. After this initial phase, AstraZeneca has an option to expand the length and scope of the collaboration.
“This collaboration is a natural progression of our successful work in advancing drug development in the fields of oncology and immunology,” said Noam Solomon, Ph.D., CEO of Immunai. “Bringing a drug to market is incredibly challenging, time consuming and expensive. Through this collaboration with AstraZeneca, we’re excited to leverage our AI-based engine the IDE to help make this process more efficient in bringing potential new therapies to patients.”
This is the latest in a string of tie-ups by Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca to use artificial intelligence for drug discovery and development, including a $247 million deal with U.S.-based Absci late last year to design an antibody to fight cancer.
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"Artificial Intelligence is transforming cancer drug discovery and clinical development. We are very pleased to collaborate with Immunai to leverage their innovative platform to enhance our data-driven R&D strategy and glean potential new insights into mechanisms of action of immunotherapies," said Iker Huerga, Chief Data Scientist, Oncology R&D, AstraZeneca.
Immunai, which employs 170 people, 85 of whom are PhDs or MDs, raised a $215 million Series B at a valuation of just over $1 billion in 2021. It has raised a total of $295 million to date.
