Blueprint Medicines is revising a pact with VantAI again, this time adding a focus for historically “undruggable” targets and prioritizing new target-effector pairs that could be used to develop molecular glue therapeutics.
The freshly amended agreement still includes $1.67 billion biobucks for VantAI and now incorporates the Roivant-backed company’s new foundational model, dubbed Neo-1, according to a May 20 release. The model is supposed to combine structure prediction and molecular design at an atomic level and thereby allow for AI-based generation of molecular glues and other protein-protein interaction modulators.
VantAI’s Neo-1 model is supposed to help speed along discovery and development of novel induced proximity therapeutics, according to the release.
“By working closely with VantAI, we look forward to accelerating early discovery activities for targeted protein degraders and advancing our integrated research approach across multiple treatment modalities,” Blueprint Chief Scientific Officer Percy Carter, Ph.D., said in the release.
The companies did not share what indications they would be specifically targeting.
The deal builds off a 2022 pact, in which Blueprint paid $20 million upfront to partner with Massachusetts biopharma Proteovant to develop two protein degraders. At the time, Blueprint offered the chance for Proteovant to bank more than $630 million in biobucks, with Roivant-backed Vant AI performing computational chemistry services on behalf of the latter.
In late 2023, after SK Pharmaceuticals acquired a 60% stake in Proteovant, Blueprint completely redid the agreement, removing Proteovant from the equation. Instead, VantAI was to provide computational support for three novel protein degrader programs directly to Blueprint. The deal included up to $1.67 billion biobucks for VantAI and gave Blueprint the option to expand the collaboration to include a fourth target program.
As of March 31, 2025, VantAI had gathered $8.5 million in contingent payments from that agreement, according to a quarterly report filed by BluePrint.
The newest revision of the pact still includes up to $1.67 billion biobucks for VantAI, of which $270 million is allocated for R&D and regulatory milestones, according to the release. The AI outfit is also eligible to receive tiered royalties.
Blueprint also still maintains the option to expand the partnership even more to include additional targets.
For Blueprint, the deal comes after cutting funding to its clinical-stage CDK2 inhibitor at the beginning of this year. The Ayvakit-maker instead turned its focus toward preclinical breast cancer-focused therapies, which are also CDK2 inhibitors.
The pipeline changes followed Blueprint’s decision to drop two non-small cell lung cancer programs in 2024 after seeing early clinical data on the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors.
As for VantAI, the New York company has pulled in Bristol Myers Squibb as well, entering a partnership last year worth up to $674 million biobucks. That collaboration also takes aim at designing molecular glues in undisclosed targets.
The independent generative AI business is a former Roivant Sciences company that now receives financially backing from the big biotech after breaking off in 2023.