Relation has announced two multi-program strategic collaborations with GSK. They will focus on the identification and validation of novel therapeutic targets for fibrotic diseases and osteoarthritis. Under the terms of both agreements, Relation will receive a total upfront payment from GSK of $45 million—including an equity investment of $15 million.
“These diseases have few treatments that address their root causes,” said David Roblin, CEO of Relation. “By combining Relation’s patient-centric discovery platform with GSK’s global scale and expertise, we have the potential to accelerate the development of transformative medicines for patients who have long awaited new therapies.”
Roblin continued: “Our approach of generating data directly from patient tissue allows us to build a comprehensive picture of the underlying human disease biology at scale. This, combined with our deployment of machine learning, enables us to make unprecedented inferences about how to effectively intervene in disease processes.”
Fibrotic diseases are estimated to affect 2.8 per 10,000 persons in the U.S. alone, there are few treatments for this condition. In 2019, about 528 million Americans had osteoarthritis. The global market for this condition has been valued at over $7B.
Relation’s platform is its Lab-in-the-Loop, which combines human genetics, single-cell multi-omics directly from human tissue, functional assays, and machine learning to discover novel disease interventions. The company has programs across metabolic and immune diseases and to date, it has raised over $80 million from leading investors, including DCVC, Magnetic, GSK, NVIDIA NVentures, Hitachi Ventures, Khosla, ARK Ventures, and Deerfield.
In these latest deals, with GSK, Relation will lead observational studies to generate two unique functional disease data sets and Relation’s Lab-in-the-Loop platform will analyze this data by integrating human genetics, single-cell multi-omics directly from human tissue, functional assays, and machine learning to discover novel disease targets.
This approach, Relation says, minimizes the risk of clinical failure by ensuring targets are robustly validated before entering the clinic. Relation will apply its platform to a number of related fibrotic conditions and also osteoarthritis. GSK will have worldwide development and commercialization rights to any resulting targets.
“Working with Relation enables us to gain deep and precise insights into human causal biology and apply these to therapeutic discovery through a data-driven approach, supported by Relation’s proprietary platform,” said Kaivan Khavandi, SVP, global head of Respiratory/Immunology R&D at GSK.
He added that, “The resulting targets will be supported by robust translational packages, which will in turn provide clarity on deployment in early clinical evaluation, ultimately supporting our broader portfolio ambition to develop new medicines for fibrotic diseases and osteoarthritis—where there remains significant unmet medical need.”
In addition to the upfront payment, Relation will be eligible to receive success-based collaboration payments of up to $63 million, as well as potential preclinical, development, commercial, and sales milestone payments averaging $200 million per target across both deals, along with tiered royalties on net sales of products.
