Friday’s deal with CSPC fits neatly within AstraZeneca’s business development strategy of upping investments in AI and in China.
AstraZeneca put down $110 million upfront to partner with China’s CSPC Pharmaceutical, aiming to leverage AI to develop novel oral therapies for a wide variety of chronic diseases, in a deal announced Friday.
Aside from its initial commitment, AstraZeneca also pledged up to $1.62 billion in development milestones, as well as sales-based contingent payments that could reach up to $3.6 billion. All told, Friday’s deal could mean a $5.3 billion windfall for CSPC, plus single-digit royalties on annual net sales of commercial products that emerge from the partnership.
AstraZeneca’s payment will grant it access to CSPC’s “AI-driven, dual-engine” drug discovery engine, which looks at how target proteins bind with different compounds, in turn allowing for the identification of small molecule drug candidates with “excellent developability,” as per Friday’s release.
The companies did not specify what their priority indications will be, revealing only that the collaboration will include one “small molecule oral therapy for immunological diseases,” which is currently in preclinical development. AstraZeneca will have the right to license candidates under this partnership, which it can exclusively develop and commercialize globally.
Friday’s CSPC partnership falls squarely inside AstraZeneca’s business development strategy, in which AI and China are both crucial components.
Speaking to BioSpace at the 2025 ASCO meeting earlier this month, Arun Krishna, AstraZeneca’s U.S. oncology head for lung cancer, said the pharma is applying AI at three distinct points in its drug development process: discovery, clinical trials and population screening. According to Krishna, deploying AI across these three critical junctures could not only help the company accelerate and optimize drug development, but could also help AstraZeneca involve itself in the entirety of a patient’s journey.
“We primarily want to treat via our drugs. It’s important but not sufficient,” he said. “Our goal is to look at the entirety of the patient pathway. AI is a critical component of that. That’s population-based screening.”
To this end, AstraZeneca in recent years has been on an AI dealmaking spree. In September 2023, for instance, the pharma paid $42 million upfront and promised $840 million in milestones to partner with Verge Genomics. The multi-target, four-year deal will leverage the biotech’s drug discovery AI for rare diseases. More recently, in April, AstraZeneca joined hands with Tempus to create a cancer-focused AI model that can help collect biological and clinical insights, which can then be used to guide drug development.
Friday’s CSPC collaboration also cements AstraZeneca as a solid investor in China—despite mounting political pressure to move away from the Asian giant. In February, the pharma snapped up FibroGen’s China business for $160 million, which it followed up a month later with a potential $10 billion-plus investment in the country.
