A 24-Hour Snapshot of AI Drug Discovery Across Pharma, Biotech, and Research
London-based Isomorphic Labs broke the news with yet another pharmaceutical partnership, announcing a new research collaboration with Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Biotech unit aimed at AI-driven drug discovery across multiple targets and therapeutic modalities.
Under the agreement, Isomorphic will apply its AI-based design platform to generate in silico predictions, while Johnson & Johnson will conduct experimental assays and advance selected programs through development. Unlike Isomorphic’s earlier partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novartis, which focused largely on small molecules, the Janssen collaboration also includes large molecules and biologics. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The announcement adds to a growing list of large pharmaceutical companies integrating AI-first discovery platforms into upstream research. Founded in 2021 to commercialize DeepMind’s AlphaFold technology, Isomorphic continues to position itself as a computational design partner rather than a developer of its own therapeutic assets.
Around the same time, Hong Kong and US-based Insilico Medicine announced a global co-development and licensing agreement with Hygtia Therapeutics for ISM8969, an orally available, brain-penetrant NLRP3 inhibitor targeting central nervous system disorders. The molecule was discovered using Insilico’s generative AI platform, Chemistry42, and has demonstrated efficacy, favorable safety, and blood–brain barrier penetration in preclinical studies.
Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will share worldwide rights equally, with Insilico eligible to receive up to $66 million in upfront and milestone payments, including an initial $10 million upfront payment. Insilico will lead IND submission and Phase 1 clinical trials beginning with Parkinson’s disease, while Hygtia will assume responsibility for later-stage development, regulatory filings, and commercialization.
On the regulatory front, Dallas-based Lantern Pharma announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted Orphan Drug Designation to LP-284 for the treatment of soft tissue sarcomas. This marks the third orphan designation for LP-284 and the sixth orphan designation granted across Lantern’s AI-driven oncology pipeline.
LP-284 is a small-molecule therapy designed to exploit DNA repair deficiencies through a synthetic lethal mechanism identified using Lantern’s RADR® AI platform. The designation expands LP-284’s development from hematologic malignancies into solid tumors and provides regulatory incentives including seven years of market exclusivity upon approval.
In Europe, a team of 18 industry and academia partners launched LIGAND-AI, a €60 million public-private research initiative funded through the European Union’s Innovative Health Initiative. The five-year project brings together researchers from nine countries, and is led by University College London as the UK’s lead academic partner, Pfizer, and the Structural Genomics Consortium.
LIGAND-AI aims to generate large, experimentally derived datasets describing ligand–protein interactions at scale, which will be released publicly to support AI model training and benchmarking in early-stage drug discovery.
We are just less than a month into 2026, but it is clear the year's start is marked by considerable momentum in the AI drug discovery space.
Topic: AI in Bio
