Zealand forges obesity alliance with AI specialist Generate

Zealand Pharma, a Copenhagen-based biotech, has formed an alliance with Generate Biomedicines, an AI-driven drug design company, to work on obesity and metabolic health. The article describes Zealand as an emerging challenger in these areas.

Zealand's pipeline already includes two candidates in pivotal trials, partnered with Roche and Boehringer Ingelheim, as well as other earlier-stage projects. The new collaboration adds an AI-based discovery effort alongside those programmes.

Generate's chief executive, Mike Nally, said in a statement that the two companies will "define what a great medicine for patients looks like for each of the two initial programmes, and then leverage the Generate platform to design multispecific candidates that meet or exceed that profile." So the collaboration begins with two initial programmes, and the aim is multispecific candidates, meaning single molecules designed to act on more than one target. The first step is to set the target profile for each programme, and Generate's platform then designs candidates to match or beat it.

The text available here is only an excerpt, so it does not give financial terms, the specific targets or the timelines. It is tagged under obesity, metabolic diseases, artificial intelligence, partnering and pharma news.

The deal matters for the Nordic AI scene because it pairs a Danish company in the obesity field with an AI drug design specialist, using AI at the design stage of new medicines rather than only in existing late-stage work.