Eli Lilly has expanded its strategic partnership with China-based XtalPi through the latter's wholly owned subsidiary Ailux in a potential USD 345 million agreement, including a multi-million dollar upfront payment and near-term milestones, for bispecific antibody (BsAb) discovery and development across multiple therapeutic areas. The collaboration leverages Ailux's AI antibody platform combining computational design with high-throughput experimental validation to accelerate candidate optimisation and pre-clinical development. This follows a 2023 USD 250 million small-molecule drug discovery collaboration between Lilly and XtalPi, demonstrating continued commitment to AI-enabled pharmaceutical research and development.
The agreement enables Lilly to nominate multiple target pairs for BsAb engineering, with Ailux receiving platform access fees and eligibility for development, regulatory and commercial milestones. XtalPi CEO Jian Ma highlighted the extension of the trusted partnership into large molecule therapeutics, reflecting validation of the AI platform's capability to generate transformative therapies. The Ailux platform integrates quantum physics modelling, generative design and developability analysis through a multimodal biologics database supporting the design of antibodies with novel functions and optimal drug-like properties for accelerated candidate selection.

According to PharmCube's NextBiopharm® database, this marks the 13th agreement for XtalPi in 2025 YTD alone. Click here to request a free trial for NextBiopharm®.