Sanofi Secures Five-Year K Pro AI License, Expands €90m Collaboration
SNY•Sanofi signed a multi-year deal with Owkin for a five-year license of K Pro AI, expanding its €90m collaboration since 2021 into immunology to develop agentic systems for drug discovery. The initiative targets faster target identification and patient subgrouping, cutting R&D timelines and bolstering decision-making.
1. Partnership Overview
Sanofi and Owkin have agreed to a multi-year collaboration, under which Sanofi will license Owkin’s K Pro AI platform for five years. This expands their existing €90m partnership since 2021 from oncology target identification into immunology and broader agentic tool development.
2. K Pro AI Platform Capabilities
K Pro fuses multimodal patient datasets with biological AI systems to create agentic digital assistants that can autonomously perform complex tasks in drug discovery and clinical development. Owkin will lead the end-to-end construction of these tools tailored to Sanofi’s workflows.
3. Strategic R&D Implications
By integrating agentic AI into target identification, patient subgrouping and clinical workflow processes, Sanofi aims to reduce R&D timelines and costs while enhancing decision-making accuracy. The move underscores Sanofi’s strategy to embed frontier AI solutions to accelerate drug development.
4. Venglustat FDA Priority Review
Last month, Sanofi received FDA priority review for its new drug application for venglustat, an oral glucosylceramide synthase inhibitor for type 3 Gaucher disease, potentially enabling a faster path to market if approved.
