AbbVie teams up with Iambic on AI-designed drugs

On September 21, AbbVie announced a multi-year collaboration with AI company Iambic. The aim is to find small-molecule drugs with first-in-class or best-in-class potential faster in immunology, neuroscience and oncology. Iambic gets an upfront payment, success-based milestones and tiered royalties on sales; amounts were not disclosed.

Iambic combines AI with automated chemistry and biology labs. Its multimodal model Enchant v3 was trained on more than 6,000 molecular properties, and NeuralPLexer is used to optimise candidate properties. The company calls the whole stack molecular superintelligence.

AbbVie says the goal is to design better molecules more efficiently and improve the probability of success. Most drug candidates fail in the clinic, so starting with better candidates cuts wasted time and money in the costly stages that follow.