Relation, GSK Deepen AI Drug Discovery Partnership With $110M Deal
The expanded deal builds on a previous collaboration and shows that there are multiple ways for pharma giants to obtain perturbation screen data.
Relation Therapeutics said it has expanded its collaboration with GSK, making the AI-first drug discovery company eligible for up to $110 million in upfront and success-based milestone payments under the new agreement.
The new collaboration, announced July 30, will focus on generating large-scale human genetic perturbation datasets and using that data in the development, validation, and training of AI models, including Relation’s Multi-Omic Regulatory Genomics using Artificial Neural Networks (MORGAN) cell biology foundation model.
In a statement, Relation said it would be able to generate “time-resolved perturbation data with multi-omics readouts” at scale.
The deal highlights the interest pharma giants have in this type of data and suggests the market for it is becoming competitive.
AI-First Biotechs Turn to Illumina for Data: Newsletter, July 21, 2026
A trio of AI-first drug discovery companies have signed on to Illumina’s Billion Cell Atlas (BCA) data offering, a sign that its bet on single-cell perturbation data is beginning to pay off.
“Deepening our understanding of the underlying biology of disease starts with richer data, to be used in models that can give us greater confidence in the discovery of therapeutic targets that can ultimately yield medicines,” Relation CEO David Roblin said in a statement. “Through this collaboration with GSK, we will generate novel datasets from physiologically relevant human disease systems that can help reveal important biological mechanisms and support future discovery efforts.”
The expanded deal builds on two strategic collaborations the companies, both based in London, announced in December 2024 targeting fibrotic diseases and osteoarthritis. Those agreements included a combined $45 million upfront payment, including a $15 million equity investment, as well as up to $63 million in success-based payments and preclinical, development, commercial and sales milestones averaging $200 million per target, along with tiered royalties on net sales.
Under those deals, Relation applies its platform — which combines human genetics, single-cell multiomics from human tissue, functional assays, and machine learning — to identify and validate disease targets, with GSK holding worldwide development and commercialization rights to any resulting targets.