Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: GILD) and Genesis Therapeutics, Inc. announced that the companies have entered into a strategic collaboration to discover and develop novel, small molecule therapies across multiple targets.

Genesis is pioneering generative and predictive artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help create therapeutics for challenging targets. This collaboration will deploy Genesis’ field-leading AI platform, GEMS (Genesis Exploration of Molecular Space), to assist in generating and optimizing molecules for targets selected by Gilead. The companies will collaborate closely on preclinical research activities and Gilead will have exclusive rights for potential clinical development and commercialization of collaboration compounds.

“The use of generative AI in drug development, enabled by people, science and other new technology, has shown potential to accelerate the discovery of molecules for challenging targets,” said Flavius Martin, M.D., Executive Vice President, Research, Gilead Sciences. “We look forward to working with Genesis to apply their AI platform to discover and advance novel therapies that may address significant unmet patient needs .”

“Many promising protein targets have a paucity of relevant training data, which makes it difficult to apply off-the-shelf machine learning methods,” said Evan Feinberg, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Genesis. "We have designed our physical AI platform to address this issue and enable drug discovery campaigns for difficult targets. Genesis is thrilled to combine our expertise in generative AI and drug discovery with Gilead’s deeply experienced research and development teams, with the shared goal of creating breakthrough therapies for patients.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Genesis will receive an upfront cash payment of $35 million across three targets and Gilead will have an option to nominate additional targets for a predetermined per-target fee. Across programs, Genesis is eligible to receive additional preclinical, development, regulatory, and commercial milestone payments. Genesis is also eligible to receive tiered royalties on net sales should Gilead successfully commercialize products from the collaboration.

Gilead does not exclude acquired IPR&D expenses from its non-GAAP financial measures. This transaction with Genesis is expected to reduce Gilead’s GAAP and non-GAAP 2024 EPS by approximately $0.02.