Relation Therapeutics Partners with GSK to Develop Treatments for Fibrotic Diseases and Osteoarthritis
Relation Therapeutics announced two strategic collaborations with GSK aimed at advancing drug discovery for fibrotic diseases and osteoarthritis, debilitating conditions with significant unmet medical needs. These collaborations will leverage Relation’s innovative discovery platform and GSK’s global development and commercialization expertise to identify and validate novel therapeutic targets.
Relation Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on discovering medicines for diseases with few effective treatments. The company’s proprietary Lab-in-the-Loop platform integrates human genetics, single-cell multi-omics derived directly from patient tissue, functional assays, and machine learning to generate actionable insights into disease biology.
Backed by leading investors such as GSK, NVIDIA NVentures, and Khosla, Relation has raised over $80 million to date and has active programs targeting metabolic and immune diseases.
Under the terms of the collaboration, Relation will receive an upfront payment of $45 million, which includes a $15 million equity investment from GSK. In addition, the company will be eligible for up to $63 million in success-based payments and milestone payments averaging $200 million per target across preclinical, development, and commercialization stages. Relation will also earn tiered royalties on net sales of any resulting products.
David Roblin, CEO of Relation Therapeutics:
“This collaboration allows us to combine Relation’s patient-centric discovery approach with GSK’s global scale and expertise,” said Roblin. “Our focus on generating insights directly from patient tissue enables us to map human disease biology at scale and uncover effective ways to intervene.”
Relation’s role in the partnership will involve conducting observational studies to create functional disease datasets for fibrotic diseases and osteoarthritis. By analyzing this data through its Lab-in-the-Loop platform, Relation will generate robustly validated targets, significantly reducing the risk of clinical failure. GSK will have worldwide rights to develop and commercialize the resulting targets, supported by comprehensive translational packages.
Kaivan Khavandi, SVP, Global Head of Respiratory/Immunology R&D at GSK:
“Relation’s platform provides us with deep insights into human causal biology, enabling a more precise, data-driven approach to therapeutic discovery.”
Topics: Startups & Deals
