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Algen Biotechnologies partners with AstraZeneca to enhance AI-driven drug discovery, targeting chronic inflammatory conditions for innovative therapeutic solutions.
The partnership aims to accelerate the discovery of therapeutic targets in immunology.
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Algen Biotechnologies announced a multi-target partnership with AstraZeneca accelerating therapeutic treatment options in immunology. Under the agreement, Algen is expected to leverage its AlgenBrain platform to drive preclinical drug discovery, along with AstraZeneca being granted exclusive rights to develop and commercialize therapy solutions for defined targets designated through the partnership.1 Algen is set to receive an upfront paymentand additional payments from AstraZeneca worth a total value of $555 million upon achievement of specific development, regulatory, and commercial milestones.
“We’re excited to collaborate with AstraZeneca to bring the power of our AI-driven functional genomics platform to decode complex chronic inflammatory conditions for drug discovery,” said Chun-Hao Huang, Ph.D., CEO & Co-Founder, Algen Biotechnologies. “Together with AstraZeneca’s deep expertise in translational science and clinical development, we aim to uncover new biological insights to accelerate the development of novel therapies alone or in combination to transform patient outcomes.”
AlgenBrain models disease progression by capturing billions of dynamic RNA changes in human disease-relevant cell types and connecting them to functional outcomes and therapeutic index through high-throughput gene modulation.1The AlgenBrain platform holds the potential to identify novel genes that, when therapeutically targeted, may reverse disease processes through mapping causal links between gene regulation and disease progression.1 Additionally, AlgenBrain grounds early discovery in human biology, while aiming to improve translational accuracy, increase the probability of clinical success, and bring more effective therapies to patients.
“This collaboration with AstraZeneca is part of a growing shift toward data-driven, biology-first approaches in drug discovery,” said Christine Du, chief business officer and co-founder of Algen Biotechnologies. “AlgenBrain is designed to uncover the most actionable targets by integrating experimental biology with AI in a continuous learning loop. By grounding discovery in human biology and mapping gene function to disease outcomes, we believe the AlgenBrain platform can help drive a new era of predictive, precision drug discovery across a wide range of therapeutic areas.”
“We are using AI and Machine Learning to enhance the discovery of new targets, which we believe will help to create more effective medicines. Truly transformative therapies begin with uncovering the right biological targets, which have strong human translational relevance. Algen’s platform offers a powerful approach to achieving this,” said Jim Weatherall Ph.D., chief data scientist of biopharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca.
Algen Biotechnologies is a precision therapeutics company focused on drug discovery at the intersection of CRISPR gene modulation and artificial intelligence.1 Algen was founded by Chun-Hao Huang and Christine Du as a spin-out from Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna’s lab at UC Berkeley.1 Algen combines deep learning with high-throughput functional genomics, aiming to identify novel therapeutic targets, while employing its end-to-end platform AlgenBrain, which integrates advanced computational models with scalable, single-cell experimental systems to decode causal disease biology, while also accelerating the development of next-generation therapies.1
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