City life sciences firm receives cash payment of more than £73m

A DUNDEE life sciences firm has received a $100 million (£73.6m) cash payment in a major deal that has the potential to be worth billions.

Exscientia uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help design drugs which can dramatically reduce the time taken to develop medicines.

The company, was founded at Dundee University a decade ago. It retains a base in the city as well as offices around the world.

It has won several multimillion dollar deals and last year floated on the Nasdaq stock exchange in America.

Exscientia’s new contract is a research collaboration with pharmaceutical company Sanofi. It will receive an upfront cash payment of $100m from Sanofi.

But, depending on the project’s success, future milestone payments could reach up to $5.2 billion.

Andrew Hopkins, founder of Exscientia, said: “It is immensely exciting to collaborate with Sanofi with our goal of realising the full potential of AI to deliver the next generation of cancer and immunology medicines.

“Our AI-driven platform can be leveraged across drug discovery, translational research and development.

“Applications range from improving the precision medicine and quality of drug candidates to enriching for patient selection in clinical trials.”

Sanofi is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on human health – it aims to prevent illness with vaccines, provide innovative treatments to fight pain and ease suffering.

Exscientia is one of Dundee’s life sciences success stories.

It continues to have 25 staff at the Dundee One building at City Quay as well as its Oxford headquarters and offices in Vienna, Miami and Osaka.

Mr Hopkins’ stake in the business is worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

Members of the Exscientia team, based in Dundee.