Insitro, a California-based AI drug discovery company, will collaborate with the US pharma giant Bristol Myers Squibb to discover and develop novel therapies to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). 

Insitro’s platform, the Insitro Human (ISH), will be used to create induced pluripotent stem cell-derived disease models for ALS and FTD. With machine learning, the platform will also provide insights into disease progression, identification of patient segments, and discovery of candidate targets. Bristol Myers may choose a number of targets identified by Insitro to advance through clinical development.

Insitro will receive USD 50 million as an upfront payment. It is also eligible for an additional USD 20 million in near-term operational milestones and up to USD 2 billion in further milestones and sales royalties. 

Founded in 2018, Insitro’s approach is based on test-tube experiments involving cells outside the human body to predict what drug developers would see in a human clinical model. Using this method, it creates genetic disease models and applies AI to find differences between healthy and sick cells.