UCB, a global biopharmaceutical company, and XtalPi, a global AI drug discovery company, entered a license agreement for XtalFold, a biologics AI platform developed by Ailux Biologics, a division of XtalPi.

Under the agreement, UCB gains a non-exclusive license to leverage XtalFold for the discovery and engineering of biologics. XtalFold is an AI-based software suite that provides rapid and accurate structural insights to help accelerate biologics discovery across multiple phases.

XtalFold utilizes sequence information alone to model the interaction between biomolecules, which forms the foundation of biotherapeutics like monoclonal antibodies. XtalFold has been licensed to multiple global pharmaceutical companies and has delivered impactful results in a variety of projects, including antigen design, epitope identification, affinity maturation, pH-sensitivity engineering, and bispecifics design.

“UCB has long been a pioneer in leveraging computation to develop highly differentiated biologics that benefit patients,” said Jian Ma, CEO of XtalPi, “We are proud to contribute to their efforts in creating therapies that transform lives.”

“UCB have a strong legacy of antibody discovery and engineering. We have established unique and powerful single-B cell screening and in vitro display discovery technologies to support hit identification and are pioneers in structure-based and computer-aided optimisation of molecules. The XtalFold license takes this further, integrating antibody-antigen structural insights into the entire antibody discovery and optimization workflow,” said Daniel Lightwood, Head of Antibody Discovery and Optimization.