Nabla and Takeda first joined hands in 2022, to push “the boundaries of next-generation biologics discovery,” according to the startup’s CEO Surge Biswas.
Shortly after walking away from the entirety of its cell therapy work, Takeda is signing a multi-year AI partnership with existing partner Nabla Bio, with an eye toward refilling its early-stage pipeline.
The back-heavy deal, announced Tuesday, will involve “double-digit millions” in an immediate payment to the Massachusetts biotech, though the companies did not provide a specific upfront amount. All told, the AI startup could receive more than $1 billion including success-based milestone payments.
Under this second collaboration, Takeda will leverage Nabla’s proprietary design platform to build out its early-stage development programs, paying particular focus to the de novo design of antibodies for “multiple” targets, though the partners didn not reveal what particular indications they plan to prioritize.
The companies will also work on “multispecifics, challenging targets, and other custom therapeutics,” they said on Tuesday, without revealing what these modalities or disease targets could be.
Nabla and Takeda first got together in 2022, the startup’s CEO Surge Biswas said in a statement, adding that their work has been focused on pushing “the boundaries of next-generation biologics discovery.” At the heart of this partnership is Nabla’s Joint Atomic Model platform, which according to its website is a “generative modeling system” that uses a wealth of protein data—bolstered with the company’s “human-relevant measurements”—to design novel de novo biologic therapies.
Aside from Takeda, AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb have also partnered with Nabla. Taken together, the deal value with these three Big Pharma collaborators exceeds $550 million, the startup announced in 2024.
For Takeda, the Nabla arrangement comes after it pulled all investments in cell therapies amid a sweeping strategic realignment effort designed to improve the company’s margins. Takeda is looking to offload its cell therapy platform and assets to a third-party partner. In conjunction with the cell therapy exit, 137 Takeda employees will lose their jobs.
AI has become an important area of innovation for the industry, with many major players forging partnerships with smaller specialists. Earlier this month, AstraZeneca made a $555 million bet with California’s Algen Biotechnologies to use machine learning in developing novel treatments for immunology targets.
In August, Eli Lilly linked up with Superluminal Medicines for up to $1.3 billion, gaining access to the biotech’s AI capabilities to find small-molecule drugs that target G protein–coupled receptors to treat obesity and other cardiometabolic conditions.
