Sanofi and Exscientia announced a research collaboration and license agreement to develop up to 15 novel small molecule candidates across oncology and immunology, leveraging Exscientia's end-to-end AI-driven platform utilizing actual patient samples. Exscientia and Sanofi will collaborate to identify and select target projects, leveraging Exscientia's personalised medicine platform. The platform enables a “patient-first” approach through integrating primary human tissue samples into early target and drug discovery research.

By doing so, Exscientia scientists can integrate patient, disease, and clinically relevant data into decisions on potential new medicine candidates earlier in the drug creation process. In addition to target discovery, Exscientia will lead small molecule drug design and lead optimization activities up to development candidate nomination, with Sanofi assuming responsibility for preclinical and clinical development, manufacturing and commercialization. Under the terms of the agreement, Exscientia will receive an upfront cash payment of $100 million from Sanofi and will be eligible to receive future research, translational, clinical development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments of up to approximately $5.2 billion in aggregate, if all milestones for all programs are achieved.

In the case that Sanofi commercializes a therapeutic from the collaboration, Exscientia will also be eligible to receive tiered royalties on product sales ranging from high-single-digits to mid-teens and an option for clinical co-investment to increase the royalty rate up to 21% on net sales of co-funded products. The upfront cash payment of $100 million is expected to be reflected in the first quarter 2022 financial results of Exscientia as cash inflows from collaborations and recognized as revenue over the duration of the agreement.