Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, and SK Biopharmaceuticals, a Korean-based company leads the way in biotech innovation with groundbreaking drug research, development, and commercialization worldwide, announced a research and development collaboration at the BIO 2026 International Convention to discover AI-enabled innovative drug candidates in the neuroimmune area of the central nervous system (CNS).
Neuroimmune disorders, including neuroinflammatory, neurodegenerative, and rare neurological disorders, remain among the most challenging therapeutic areas in modern medicine, with significant unmet patient need and historically low clinical success rates.
Under the agreement, Insilico will leverage its proprietary Pharma.AI platform, which spans target validation, generative chemistry, and molecule optimization, together with its preclinical drug discovery expertise to discover, design, and optimize novel candidates for neuroimmune indications. SK Biopharmaceuticals will contribute its extensive development and clinical capabilities in neuroimmune disorders, steering the late-stage development and commercialization of all resulting programs. Together, the two companies aim to accelerate discovery timelines and advance next-generation therapies for patients worldwide.
Financially, Insilico will be eligible to receive up to $18 million in upfront and near-term milestone payments. The total potential deal value exceeds $2.5 billion, including development, regulatory, and commercial milestone payments, as well as single-digit royalties on net sales upon commercialization. Notably, the partnership sets a record by total potential deal value that Insilico has secured with APAC partners to date.
“This collaboration represents an important milestone in expanding our growth beyond epilepsy into new CNS therapeutic areas, building on the deep CNS expertise we have established through the successful development and commercialization of Cenobamate,” said Donghoon Lee, President and CEO of SK Biopharmaceuticals. “By combining Insilico’s AI-powered drug discovery platform with SK Biopharmaceuticals’ clinical development and U.S. commercialization capabilities, we believe we can accelerate the discovery of innovative CNS therapies for patients. Beyond a single program, we see this collaboration as a scalable and repeatable growth platform that can be leveraged for future target discovery and development opportunities.”
Also Read: Nirrin Technologies and S.T. Japan Partner for TALOS™
“We are delighted to announce this great news at the 2026 BIO International Convention, which underscores the tremendous power of industry communication and collaboration in accelerating progress in healthcare,”said Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, founder, co-CEO, and CBO of Insilico Medicine. “SK Biopharmaceuticals is a visionary partner, merging global leadership and commercialization expertise with a forward-thinking embrace of AI. By uniting Insilico’s AI-driven target-to-candidate engine with SK Biopharmaceuticals‘ deep CNS mastery, we aim to unlock breakthrough therapies, spanning both traditional small molecules and advanced new modalities, to address critical patient needs.”
As an AI-native biotechnology company, Insilico is redefining the efficiency of preclinical drug development through its advanced AI and automation platform, setting a new standard for the industry. While traditional early-stage drug discovery typically takes 2.5 to 4 years, Insilico has consistently reached preclinical candidate (PCC) nomination in an average of just 12 to 18 months, with only 60 to 200 molecules synthesized and tested per program. Since 2021, the company has nominated 31 PCCs, 13 of which have received IND approval or clearance.
While expanding the practical applications of its technology in drug discovery and life science research, Insilico is also continuously enhancing the performance of its AI platform. Drawing on extensive experience and datasets from its training platform, the company has distilled thousands of benchmarks and integrated them into MMAI Gym. Serving as both a “trainer and benchmark” for scientific AI, MMAI Gym enables organizations to train models for domain-specific reasoning while rigorously evaluating their performance on real-world tasks, advancing the path toward pharma superintelligence. To date, Human Longevity and Liquid AI have collaborated with Insilico, joining as partners of MMAI Gym.
Source: PRNewswire
