US-based Recursion Pharmaceuticals Inc, a digital biology company industrialising drug discovery, announced on Wednesday that it has entered into a strategic collaboration agreement with Germany-based pharmaceutical and life sciences company, Bayer.

The partnership is intended to leverage Recursion's purpose-built artificial intelligence-guided drug discovery platform and Bayer's small molecule compound library and deep scientific expertise to discover and develop new treatments for fibrotic diseases of the lung, kidney, heart and more. In addition, Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm of Bayer AG, is leading Recursion's Series D financing with an investment of USD50 million.

'We are driving forward digital transformation in R&D as we believe that digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, offer a myriad of novel opportunities to address the complex biology of many diseases and identify new treatments for patients,' said Joerg Moeller, MD, member of the Executive Committee of Bayer AG's Pharmaceuticals Division and head of Research and Development. 'The collaboration with Recursion enables us to discover small molecule drug candidates targeting novel biology for the treatment of fibrotic diseases and complements our expertise in cardiovascular research with digital technologies.'