AI Meets Medicine: Insitro and Lilly Collaborate on Metabolic Disease Therapies

Insitro, a company specializing in machine learning-enabled drug discovery, has announced three strategic partnerships with Eli Lilly focused on developing new treatments for metabolic diseases, including metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). These diseases impact millions of people worldwide, but effective treatments remain scarce. The collaboration aims to change this by combining Insitro's AI-based platform for early biological discovery with Lilly’s expertise in drug delivery and metabolic disease research.

In the first two agreements, the company has the option to license Lilly's proprietary GalNAc (N-acetylgalactosamine) delivery technology, which it will pair with two of its own siRNA molecules that target different liver functions. The third agreement involves the joint discovery and development of an antibody for a new metabolic disease target, with Insitro leading preclinical development and eventually taking responsibility for all further development and commercialization.

Daphne Koller, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Insitro, said, “We are innovating not only in our biology discovery but also how we partner with industry leaders like Lilly to accelerate our therapeutic programs toward the clinic. Our proprietary AI/ML platform, leveraging multimodal data at scale, computational power, and genetics, has identified several high-value targets with extensive support in human genetics and translatable models. These could help provide transformative impact for patients with metabolic disease by addressing it at its root, and bringing together the best of biotech and pharma skill sets accelerates our impact.”

Through these agreements, insitro will collaborate with Lilly's Catalyze360-ExploR&D initiative, benefiting from Lilly’s research expertise. While Insitro will maintain full global rights to its programs, Lilly is eligible for milestone payments and royalties. This partnership underscores Insitro’s capabilities in early drug development and its commitment to advancing these programs through strategic collaborations.