Absci rockets as it inks AI research deal with Merck

Canada-headquartered artificial intelligence (AI) company Absci Corporation (Nasdaq: ABSI) saw its shares leap more than 50% pre-market on Friday, on the back of new that it has entered into a research collaboration with Merck & Co (NYSE: MRK) for the US pharma giant to use Absci’s AI-powered Integrated Drug Creation Platform.

Under the collaboration, Absci will deploy its Bionic Protein non-standard amino acid technology to produce enzymes tailored to Merck’s biomanufacturing applications and receive an upfront and certain other milestone payments.

In addition, Merck has the option to nominate up to three targets and enter into a drug discovery collaboration agreement, and Absci would then be eligible to receive up to $610 million in upfront fees and milestone payments for all three targets, as well as research funding and tiered royalties on sales.