Iambic Announces Collaboration with Takeda to Advance AI-Driven Design of Small Molecules
Multi-year partnership will utilize Iambic’s broad suite of AI drug discovery technologies and wet lab capabilities to advance collaboration programs initially in Takeda’s Oncology and Gastrointestinal and Inflammation Therapeutic Areas
Iambic to provide Takeda access to NeuralPLexer, Iambic’s industry-leading model for predicting protein-ligand complexes, enabling Takeda to more broadly accelerate its drug discovery and development efforts
Iambic to receive upfront, research cost, and technology access payments and is eligible to receive success-based payments that could exceed $1.7 billion. Iambic is also eligible to receive royalties on net sales of any products generated from this collaboration.
San Diego, CA and Cambridge, MA – February 9, 2026 – Iambic, a clinical-stage life science and technology company developing novel medicines using its AI-driven discovery and development platform, today announced a multi-year technology and discovery collaboration agreement with Takeda that will use Iambic’s industry leading AI drug discovery models to advance a select set of high-priority small molecule programs, initially in Takeda’s Oncology and Gastrointestinal and Inflammation therapeutic areas. Through the agreement, Takeda will also gain access to NeuralPLexer, Iambic’s industry leading model for predicting protein-ligand complexes.
“Our collaboration with Takeda is a powerful opportunity to apply our AI-driven discovery and development platform, and we are excited to partner with their team to quickly advance new and better drug candidates,” said Tom Miller, PhD, Co-Founder and CEO of Iambic. “This collaboration further validates our industry-leading technology and highlights both the breadth of our discovery capabilities and the scale at which we can operate.”
“We are excited to be able access Iambic’s proprietary computational platform while we work with their team to develop small molecule therapeutics with the potential to address critical unmet patient needs,” said Chris Arendt, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Research at Takeda. “At Takeda, our focus is on accelerating the development of impactful new medicines by leveraging cutting-edge science, including the latest advances in artificial intelligence. Iambic’s small molecule platform aligns with this ambition and offers the potential to de-risk candidate selection, improve probability of success, and more quickly advance select programs from early project start to IND.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Iambic will receive upfront, research cost, and technology access payments and is eligible to receive success-based payments that could exceed $1.7 billion. The company is also eligible to receive royalties on net sales of any products generated from this collaboration.
The collaboration will utilize Iambic’s AI models as well as the company’s fully integrated, high-throughput, and automated wet lab capabilities. These core capabilities support a rapid Design-Make-Test-Analyze cycle that can accelerate program advancement.
About Iambic’s AI-Driven Discovery Platform
The Iambic AI-driven platform was created to address the most challenging design problems in drug discovery, leveraging technology innovations such as Enchant (multimodal transformer model that predicts clinical and preclinical endpoints) and NeuralPLexer (best-in-class predictor of protein and protein-ligand structures). The integration of physics principles into the platform’s AI architectures improves data efficiency and allows molecular models to venture widely across the space of possible chemical structures. The platform enables identification of novel chemical modalities for engaging difficult-to-address biological targets, discovery of defined product profiles that optimize therapeutic window, and multiparameter optimization for highly differentiated development candidates. Through close integration of AI-generated molecular designs with automated chemical synthesis and experimental execution, Iambic completes design-make-test cycles on a weekly cadence.
About Iambic
Iambic is a clinical-stage life-science and technology company developing novel medicines using its AI-driven discovery and development platform. Based in San Diego and founded in 2020, Iambic has assembled a world-class team that unites pioneering AI experts and experienced drug hunters. The Iambic platform has demonstrated delivery of new drug candidates to human clinical trials with unprecedented speed and across multiple target classes and mechanisms of action. Iambic is advancing a pipeline of potential best-in-class and first-in-class clinical assets, both internally and in partnership, to address urgent unmet patient need. Learn more about the Iambic team, platform, pipeline, and partnerships at Iambic.ai.
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