Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Inceptive Nucleics, a company that builds foundation models of life, have agreed on a $2bn collaboration to integrate Inceptive’s generative AI models with Alnylam’s R&D engine.

The collaboration seeks to advance siRNA design, by modelling target mRNAs and jointly exploring sequence space and novel chemical modifications to enhance potency and efficacy, and by predicting top-performing therapeutic candidates in preclinical models for further development by Alnylam. The goal is to help Alnylam prioritise the most promising molecules and improve experimental productivity.

The collaboration pairs Alnylam’s RNAi leadership with Inceptive’s foundation models and AI expertise to catalyse and accelerate progress in nucleic-acid based drug design. Inceptive focuses on developing models for sequence-based medicines such as RNAi therapeutics, which were pioneered by Alnylam.

• Alnylam’s platform: An R&D engine that has produced six approved drugs, backed by 20+ years of proprietary siRNA data
• Inceptive’s foundation models of life: AI models for sequence-based medicines that generalise across programmes and continuously improve.

Yvonne Greenstreet, CEO of Alnylam, said: “Inceptive stands apart as one of the most visionary companies working at the intersection of AI and biology. It is led by pioneers of the AI revolution and driven by an ambitious mission to fundamentally reinvent how RNA medicines are designed. Together, we have an extraordinary opportunity to accelerate the creation of transformative medicines with a speed, ingenuity and sophistication that simply has not been possible before.”

Inceptive’s foundation model learns the patterns underlying biology and can adapt to diverse therapeutic modalities without retraining. In joint exploratory work, the model achieved exceptional performance within weeks, uncovering meaningful biological insights from relatively small data sets to characterise siRNA molecules, the active ingredient in RNAi therapeutics.

Jakob Uszkoreit, Inceptive co-founder and CEO, commented: “Most drug design still works through a process of trial and error, testing thousands of molecules and hoping something sticks. Inceptive was built on a different premise: that life follows rules of such complexity that only AI can learn them. Alnylam’s breakthrough platform and scientific vision are an ideal match for AI. Together, we’re not just accelerating drug discovery; we’re changing the way we understand and improve life.”

The US FDA has approved Eli Lilly’s Ebglyss (lebrikizumab) as a maintenance dose for patients with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis.

The subcutaneous maintenance dose is given once every eight weeks as a single injection (250mg/2mL). It is suitable for use by adults and children with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis who are 12 years of age and older and weigh at least 88 pounds (40 kg).

Ebglyss is already approved for a once-monthly maintenance dose, with long-term data showing durable disease control. Now, Ebglyss gives patients with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis the option to manage their condition with as few as six maintenance injections per year.

The approval is based on longitudinal exposure-response modelling data and supported by every-eight-week clinical data from an extension to the phase 3 ADjoin long-term trial, which evaluated Ebglyss maintenance dosing every four weeks or every eight weeks over 32 weeks.

Lilly has exclusive rights for development and commercialisation of Ebglyss in the US and the rest of the world outside Europe. Almirall has licensed the rights to develop and commercialise Ebglyss to treat dermatology indications, including atopic dermatitis, in Europe.