Boehringer Ingelheim is paying up to $15 million to access Immunai’s single-cell AI platform for discovering new therapeutic targets on dysfunctional T cells, marking the third Big Pharma partnership for the techbio company this year.
The deal extends through 2027, with the option for both parties to expand the collaboration if initial work succeeds. Immunai will analyse T cells from patients with various cancers and autoimmune diseases using its AI platform, building a shared data foundation spanning both disease areas. Once promising targets are identified, Immunai will validate them in its New York City wet lab before handing off drug programs to Boehringer.
Cancer immunology and autoimmune diseases both involve T-cell dysfunction, but they have largely been investigated separately, said Immunai co-founder and CEO Noam Solomon. By taking an unbiased approach across thousands of patient samples, the company hopes to uncover therapeutic opportunities that would otherwise remain hidden.
The Boehringer collaboration follows a January pact with Bristol Myers Squibb and a May expansion of Immunai’s partnership with AstraZeneca worth $37.5 million. Immunai now works with eight of the top 20 pharma companies, leveraging a database of 50,000 single-cell samples from patients who responded and did not respond to different treatments.
Immunai’s decision to launch a wet lab at its founding in 2018 gives it the ability to generate proprietary data for its AI models, a differentiator as many AI-only biotechs must rely on public or purchased datasets.
